Long Odds
by Tuonela
Summary: The pilots discover the side effects of being Gundam pilots without Gundams.
1. Conditional Probability

Long Odds

Twelve-word summary: The pilots discover the side effects of being Gundam pilots without Gundams.

Info: 1x2 at the moment; post-EW, AU-ish with Newtypes.

All the usual disclaimers go here.

1: Conditional Probability

Heero nodded a brisk acknowledgement of Duo's cheerful, "Over here!" and wave, crossing the restaurant towards the other boy.  He noted the duffle back next to Duo as he slid into the opposite booth seat.  "When are you leaving?"

"The flight's scheduled to leave in about three hours, so we can take our time," Duo said lightly.  One corner of his mouth quirked in what Heero had learned was an ironic smile.  "Plenty opportunity for gab and all that jazz."

Casting another glance around the place now that he had more leisure for study, Heero took note of its generally shabby appearance and proliferation of glass facing the high-rise opposite.  He pressed his back securely against the partition of the booth behind him and the windowless wall adjacent to it. "Why here?" 

Duo replied with a familiar glint in his eyes, "I didn't think you'd see me off with a kiss at the shuttleport."  

Heero frowned; he should have anticipated Duo willfully misreading that question. He briefly considered asking again--Duo seldom failed to respond with the information he knew Heero wanted when asked a second time--then discarded that in favor of the plan he had developed while recuperating in the Brussels hospital. "No.  But--"  He closed his mouth on his next words when a waitress showed signs of approaching them.

"We'll have two waters, an orange juice for him, and a coffee for me, miss--Miss Julie," Duo said when the waitress stopped in front of him.  "But we'll need a couple more minutes before we're ready to order.  That okay?" 

"Sure," the waitress replied, not looking up from her notepad as she wrote down the order.  "Two waters, orange juice, coffee.  Back in five." 

As she headed off, Heero gave Duo an inquiring look.  "Coffee?"

"Hilde took me out to try some a few times, then started buying some for the office; she said as long as I was on Earth I ought to ask for some here; it's the real stuff, not the synthetic shit made in the colonies," Duo said, pulling two menus from their metal clamp and handing one to Heero.  "It takes a while to get used to it--tastes awful bitter--but it smells good."

"Ah."  Heero glanced at the menu, grateful for the brief descriptions of the items in Standard.   The Dutch names told him nothing.  "Why?"

"Huh?"

"Why get used to it if the taste isn't pleasant?"  Heero set the menu aside as he determined his order.  Duo was still making up his mind: Heero could tell from the way the other's glance shifted back and forth between two areas of the menu. 

"Well, I don't know," Duo said vaguely, then flipped the menu atop Heero's and leaned back against the booth, linking his fingers behind his head.  "Hilde says it's 'cause of the caffeine.  Me. . . . You know how I like warm things."

Heero didn't need Duo's suddenly sly demeanor to tell him that was a loaded comment.  "Aa," he replied evenly, refusing to satisfy the other with more.

Duo laughed, straightening and letting his hands fall.  He picked up one of the packets of synthetic sugar from a tray on the table and flapped it idly.  "So. You were saying.  But?"

"Two waters, juice, coffee," announced the waitress, setting the items down before them.  Heero resisted the urge to scowl at the interruption.  "Your orders, sirs?"

Duo reeled his off glibly, tearing open the packet of sweetener and dumping it into the mug.  Heero gave his to the waitress, resisting the urge to scowl at the interruption.  He should have asked immediately; by now he would have already known the answer.  All it would take was a simple yes or no, quickly enough given.  Then again, this involved Duo and he seemed to relish stretching out discussions to no end.

After the waitress walked away and Duo had added a second packet of sweetener to his coffee and twisted the neatly torn-off tops of the packets into little pink bows that put Heero in mind of Relena, Duo prompted again, "But?"

"But you could stay instead," Heero answered.  He laid his hands flat on the table, palms-down against the smooth surface, and laid it out as he would a mission plan.  "We tell Une that we want those jobs she offered us. Rent an apartment.  Work for the Preventers."

Lifting his spoon from the coffee mug, Duo watched the drops of dark liquid drip from it.  Heero studied his face carefully, but the other pilot, always adept at concealing his true reactions, displayed none of the signals Heero had painstakingly begun to catalogue as the One Year War had drawn to a close.  Instead, the clink of metal against porcelain hit Heero's ears, sharp as a gun report, when Duo knocked the spoon lightly against the rim of his mug.  

"Heero, man," he said after what felt like the longest pause Heero had ever seen him give in response to a question.  "Are you asking because you don't want to miss getting any if I left?"  He laid the spoon on his saucer in a precise tangent line to the mug, keeping his eyes on the coffee.

"No."

"Then why?"

"It is a sensible move to make when one wants to maintain daily contact with another."

One corner of Duo's mouth twitched, his eyelids lowering.  "An apartment, huh?" he said, looking up at last.  Heero recognized the expression then; he'd seen it on the other's face once or twice during the war when they had first fumbled their way through sex, usually after something which Heero had said that surprised Duo.  

"Yes."

Duo finally took a sip from the mug, his hands wrapped around it.  "One apartment, for both of us?"

"Yes."

Duo's mobile features flexed, becoming intent as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the tabletop.  "Two bedrooms," he said, placing the words as he would a pawn in the opening moves of a chess game.  

"No pets," Heero countered.  Duo tried to strike bargains like it was a spinal reflex: Heero had seen him at it once or twice when negotiating repairs for Deathscythe with Howard.  It was probably what had made Hilde want him in her salvage business.

Duo shrugged, nudging his coffee saucer to the side when the waitress arrived with their breakfasts.   "It has to have a bathtub."

Eying his food--he thought he recognized everything except some sort of mash next to the eggs--Heero unwrapped the napkin from the utensils the waitress had set at his hand and said, "As long as you take charge of cleaning the bathroom."

"Heh," Duo responded as he smeared butter over his own meal: it was some sort of square bread indented in a gridlike pattern.  He methodically began to fill each square of the grid with syrup.  "You'd have to . . .  sweep the floors, or mop, or whatever."

Heero sampled each of the foods on his plate before deciding to start with the mash first.  "If you wash the dishes."

Duo grimaced. "I hate doing the dishes."

"So do I."  The mash wasn't that bad; it tasted like pepper and potatoes and cheese.

Duo flicked a glance up from where he was neatly cutting off a corner of the square bread: he had precisely angled the cut to include one full square and bisected two others as right triangles.  Heero's contemplation of whether Duo's fascination with math extended to calculating the surface area of the triangular forkful was interrupted by a teasing, "The perfect soldier hates something?" 

Heero lifted one shoulder in a shrug, taking a swallow from the orange juice to clear his mouth of the greasy aftertaste of his meal.  "We could split the dishes."

"And there's always disposable plates," Duo agreed, cheerfully swabbing another bite of food in the spilled syrup on his plate.  This one was a rectangle, two squares long.  

Heero estimated its surface area to be approximately two hundred and twenty-five square millimeters. "Aa.  Your flight?"  The orange juice made the mash much more palatable.  He began to alternate his intake of each.

"I can reschedule. We could start looking today," Duo said, looking at Heero challengingly, as if he weren't yet entirely certain that the mission wasn't about to go bust.

"Where would you stay?"

"Not with Relena, that's for sure."  Duo grinned.  "I'm not up to the fainting-into-her-arms thing, if that's what it takes to get an invite."

Heero cut the edges off the first of his fried eggs until he had a square, exactly the length on each side as the length of the tines on his fork.  He responded flatly, "Now that the Mariemaia situation is over, Relena will be returning to her home.  I was not planning to wait until then to leave the embassy, however."  Cutting the square of the egg into smaller pieces, he watched the yolk seep out and pool on his plate.

"We could go back to my hotel, I guess, and see if they have rooms available.  Hey, Heero?"  

Duo's tone had a note in it Heero had learned usually meant that some plan was in the offing, one which the Duo anticipated would cause aggravation for someone else, and amusement for Duo.  Heero looked up and caught sight of a familiar curve to the other's mouth.  "What?"

"Let's make sure to tell Wufei before he heads out again.  I want to see him when he hears the news."

Heero took in the other boy's opaque smirk, and asked on a whim, "How big is this?" and flashed a bite of fried egg before putting it in his mouth.

Duo's smile broke into a lopsided grin.  "Two hundred and thirty-four square millimeters."

*     *     *

"An apartment together, huh?" Duo mused as he walked next to Heero, mouth curved up at one corner.  He resisted the urge to grin at the passers-by and amused himself by timing the elevated beat of his heart in the intervals of his footsteps instead. "Got a neighborhood in mind? Thought about commuting or accessibility to public transportation yet?"

"No," Heero said, his hands tucked into the pockets of the dark jacket he wore.  Duo started to toss off a teasing remark;, but before he did socould get it out, Heero spoke up again. "I thought I would wait to see what you wanted."

Duo shot him a look, finding the other's features inscrutable as Heero stared at the flashing "don't walk" sign at the corner across from them and came to a halt.  Heero had been thinkingabout it, for damn sure. Asking him. Wanting him to stay.  Feeling winded by the idea, Duo said weakly, "Yeah, first things first, I guess," as he lowered his arms from where he'd clasped hands behind his head.

"Secure the hotel rooms."

"Uh-huh. And then make a couple vid calls to let folks know I'm not leaving just yet."  Duo's spirits rose as he studied the steady red of the "don't walk" sign.  He'd missed something all this past year.  Maybe this was it; maybe Heero was it.  

The vehicles rushing across the road slowed to a stop; there was a ninety-eight percent chance that the walk-light would change in three seconds..  The 'walk' sign was about to come on.  Duo rocked his weight onto the toes of his feet and stepped forward eagerly.  

A hand grasping his arm caught him short.  "Wha--?" he began, looking at Heero in surprise.  The walk sign shifted to flash a green figure at them. 

Letting go of Duo's arm, Heero stepped past him onto the crosswalk.  "The light hadn't changed yet."

Duo moved quickly after him.  "It was about to," he retorted. "By the time I stepped onto the street, the light would have been green."

"Hn," Heero grunted skeptically.  

"Hah!" Duo replied in scoff to that skepticism, then continued quickly, "Anyway, this'll be fun.  How do you find an apartment on Earth, d'you know?  On L2, you just have to know someone who knows someone who has space in their building."

"They have net listings. I think," Heero said.

Duo flicked a glance over the faces of those walking past them, then onto the garish signs of the shops along the sidewalk.  "This way," he said at another corner, heading down the street to the right.  His stride hitched as he noted one with guns and knives on display in the window.  He couldn't read the local language of the sign, but it the newness of the weapons made apparent that it wasn't an antique shop.  "You think?  You didn't stay on Earth after the war? I thought you had, since that's where you sent Wing to me and Quatre from.  And when you called me, your vid transmission originated from Earth."  He looked sidelong at Heero and cocked a sly smile. "Unless you were rerouting the transmission for security?"

Heero's features remained impeturbablyimperturbably calm, but Duo thought he could detect a flicker of what might be amusement in the way Heero narrowed his eyes before his gaze shifted to the weapons shop.  They stopped in front of it to look at the window display.  "I did bounce the transmission, but I was on Earth.  I didn't know vid units displayed call transmission details."

"Ah, you never can know too much about who wants to track you down," Duo said lightly.  He studied the Glock on display.  The gun he'd shot Heero with when they first met had been a Glock, he thought with a touch of nostalgia that immediately made him want to laugh.  Instead, he leaned closer to Heero to whisper in the other's ear, "I modified my vid unit a little."  He caught the tightening in the muscles of Heero's shoulders and decided to have a little more fun.  "I could show you the code sometime . . . when we're alone."

"Yes," Heero said, and Duo would have laughed aloud had that not had a high probability of making Heero mad.  

Instead, he threw an arm around Heero's shoulders and, encouraged when it wasn't immediately shrugged off, steered them away from the window and back into the flow of pedestrians.  "Some pretty pieces that guy had.  I wonder how long before Relena and her politician cronies make those kind of shops illegal."

Heero shrugged, slipping Duo's arm off his neck.  Duo shoved his hands into his jacket pockets, rolling one shoulder to reposition the duffel bag slung over it.  "Another year, maybe two. There will be more support for that thanks to this Mariemaia business," Heero said.

Duo looked at the faces of the pedestrians passing him and wondered what they'd been doing while he and the others had been fighting in Brussels.  Bremen wasn't so far away, and it hosted the headquarters of the Preventers; it would've been high on Mariemaia's list of places to take control of.  Had the locals been worried? Had any of them gone to BremenBrussels, to take peace in their own hands?  He watched a mother bend over a child in a stroller; a gangly boy with half his scalphead shaved and a line of silver rings curving up his ear, taller than either he or Heero, brushed past them.  "Yeah, maybe.  Not too much, though, or the Preventers wouldn't want us."

When Heero didn't respond immediately, Duo decided to prod a little.  "You never said what you'd beenyou were doing on Earth."  He wished that the chance Heero would respond with something like, "There was this plan called Operation Meteor" wasn't nonexistent.  The closest Duo had ever known Heero to come to making a joke was when he had assumed Duo's name in one of the innumerable boarding schools they'd hacked their way in and out of as covers during the war.  And maybe that was only like a joke because it had amused Duo.  

"No," Heero said.

Duo screwed his features into a grimace, then opened them in time to jerk out of the way as a businessman nearly knocked into Duo as he hurried past.  "Shit!"  He turned his head to follow the businessman's figure a moment, then sighed and caught up with Heero.  "I bet that wouldn't have happened if I'd been taller," he groused, then said, "So, is that a 'no' because you were agreeing that you hadn't told me, or was that a 'no' because you didn't want to tell me?"  He paused for the space of a heartbeat, then nudged Heero with his shoulder. "Tell you what."  Catching Heero's sidelong glance, he gave Heero a challenging smile. "A bargain, since you said this shared apartment was about maintaining contact, and you can't do that if you don't talk from time to time.  If you answer one of my questions, you can ask me a question, and I'll answer.  How's about that?"

Heero's brows pulled together.  "You would answer regardless. I don't see what makes that reciprocal."

"I won't hedge, then," Duo offered, pushing open the hotel door and holding it for Heero.  Heero returned the favor by holding open the inner door for him to pass through. "Thanks.  Would that work? Have we got a bargain?"

"Alright."

"Great, man!" 

Duo caught the eye of the woman waiting the reception desk.  "Guten morgen," she greeted in the local language, smiling a welcome at him and Heero.  In Standard, she continued, "Mr. Maxwell, did you leave something here?"

Duo shook his head, leaning on the countertop with one elbow.  "Nah.  I've had a change of plans and'll be staying in town longer.  So I was wondering if you might have any rooms available?" 

"I think we do.  One moment while I check, please," the woman said.  "How many nights do you plan to stay?"

Duo looked at Heero questioningly, sliding his duffel bag off his shoulder and dropping it onto the ground by his feet.  "Um, maybe a week?" Duo answered after getting nothing but a shrug from Heero.

The receptionist resumed her typing; Duo toyed with the pen chained to the counter.  It was octagonal and flat silver in color, with a join midway that made him think of Deathscythe's beam scythe.   After a moment of typing, the receptionist said cheerfully, "We do have rooms available.  Would you like to reserve one for yourself?"

Duo put the pen down before he was tempted to pretend it was the scythe and poke it at things, like the leaves of the potted plant sitting on the counter.  "Yeah, thanks! One for me and one for—"

"Just one," Heero interrupted.  

Surprised, Duo said, "I thought you were going to be leaving the embassy. Don't you want to go on and—"

"Yes. But only one room is necessary."

"We have rooms available with two queen-sized beds," the receptionist offered.

"Only one bed is necessary."

Duo laughed, feeling a return of the earlier excitement whichthat had bubbled through him after Heero had set out his plan in the restaurant.  It was almost like being in Deathscythehis Gundam again, the way anticipation brightened the edges of everything.  "Just one bed, then," he agreed, turning back to the receptionist.  "Do you need to see my identification card or anything?"

"All your information is still on file with us, Mr. Maxwell.  If I could just see your companion's ID, we'll be all set," said the receptionist with a smile.

Heero reached past Duo to place a card on the counter; scanning it upside-down, Duo stored away the details of its information before the receptionist picked it up.  When he looked away to see Heero watching him, he said, "They always do take the shittiest photos for IDs, don't they? Yours looks like it could've been shot by some OZ goon."

Heero gave him a flat stare.  The receptionist laughed as Duo had known she would, saying, "Isn't that true? My vehicle permit photo makes me look like I've just walked out of jail, too.  --Here you go."  She slid two squares of plastic towards them, then set down Heero's identification next to them.  "Those keycards will give you access to your room, number 819.  Thank you for deciding to stay with us again, Mr. Maxwell.  If you need anything, simply screen us from your room."

"Will do," Duo said, picking up one of the keycards and bending to get his duffel bag.  "Elevator's this way," he said to Heero, heading around the corner to the far side of the lobby.

He didn't need to look at Heero to feel the tension that had knotted Heero's muscles after the comment about OZ.  As soon as the elevator door slid shut behind them, he watched Heero check the elevator out for cameras.  Finding none, he hissed, "I can't believe you said that, Duo."

Duo evaluated the entertainment factor of the several possible responses he could make to that, then quickly estimated the likelihood of his favorites putting Heero into a bad mood.  It was that more than anything else which resulted in his saying, as the elevator passed the second floorthat made him say, "I knew she wouldn't read anything into it.  And it does.  More than mine, and that's saying something, since my photo _was taken by OZ goons."_

Heero stared at him.  "You used an OZ profile photo for your identification card?" The elevator binged as it paused at the fourth floor.  Its doors slid open but, when no- one entered, shut again and resumed its ascension. 

Once the doors had closed, Duo said, "Yeah, why not? I figured I might as well get something out of it.  And of course I didn't use the photo they put on the posters. They took some better ones later, when they weren't in such a hurry."  When Heero continued to stare at him, he decided to change the subject.  As the elevator chimed its way past the sixth floor, he said, "Anyway, you agreed to the bargain thing.  We should finalize that."  His mouth quirked up at one corner. "Seal it with a kiss."  Heero eyed him, but when he didn't say anything one way or another, Duo continued, "It's a tradition, you know."  The elevator announced its arrival at the eighth floor with another bing.  Its doors slid open.  "Unless you've got something against kissing in public?"

Heero stepped out beside him.  "Is it different when it's in public versus when in private?"

Following the prompting of the discrete brass plates on the wall, Duo turned to the left and began counting off doors.  "I cannot claim to have made a serious study of the differences," he said.  823 . . . 821 . . . 819.

"Is that a hedge?" Heero asked, sliding his keycard into the door's slot.  

Duo hung back as he did so, wistfully picturing where he'd place the explosive if he'd wanted to blast the door open.  When the question registered, he made a noise of amusement. "No, I was just quoting Wufei."  Entering the room, he dropped his duffel onto the drawers next to the vid unit.  "I'm gonna call Hilde, let her know.  You want to call Une after that?"

The bedsprings creaked as Heero sat down on it behind him.   "Aa."

Waiting for the vid screen to finish running through its startup mode, Duo listened to Heero lie down on the bed and tried to imagine what it would be like to live with him every day.  He liked gambles where he couldn't predict the outcome, and two bedrooms meant Duo'd have his own space if Heero pissed him off too much, but. . . . "Ah, here we go."  Duo disabled the vid unit's audio feature, moving quickly enough to cut it off before it started its welcome speech, then ran through the off-planet call options and entered Hilde's number.  Waiting for her to pick up, he leaned backwards against the seat so he could look at Heero upside-down, pushing his toes against the floor so that the chair rocked back as well.  "Heero," he said.  

Heero looked away from the open window and propped himself up on an elbow to face Duo.  Duo smiled at him.  "Your face is getting red," Heero remarked.

"I--damn," said Duo, jerking upright and letting the chair fall back to the ground with a thump as Hilde's answering service took the call.  "Yo, Hilde!  Done talking to Une and all, but Heero begged me not to go--" Duo ignored the noise of protest from behind him, continuing blithely with, "--so he and I are gonna be looking for a place to shack up and work for Une for a bit.  I'll let you know when I'll be back to pick up my stuff, 'kay?"  He bent closer to the screen to add in a conspiratorial tone, "I think you were right about the red shirt.  Be safe.  Bye!"  

He disconnected the call, stared at the screen a moment, then said, "I want to make one more call. That okay by you?  All yours after that for calling Une."  

"Aa.  What was that about the red shirt?"  

Duo started to answer with a casual, "Just some in-joke that--"  He paused.  "Hilde gave me this shirt," he said, thumbing the collar of the shirt he wore beneath his black jacket.  "First time I wore it out to a bar, about four guys hit on me.  So Hilde said it was obviously the shirt. . . . What do you think, should I hack this call through, or just call some re-routers?" he asked, not really wanting to go into what Hilde had specifically said about the shirt.

"What?"  The bed creaked as Heero sat upright.  "Hack a hotel vid unit?  Who are you calling?"

"Well, G."

After a moment, Heero said, "They've got your name downstairs."

"I suppose so. Damn.  Bouncing's not as fun."  Duo dialed a number, waited for it to connect, and dialed a second, then repeated the process for a third. When the call picked up, he pressed a number on the screen keypad. "There.  Now to wait and see if he's around."

"You keep in touch with G."

"Yeah."Yeah. I don't know so many people as to not.  J cut you loose or something?"  Glancing at Heero and taking in the tenseness of his carriage, Duo bent over to unzip his duffel and rummage through it.  

"Mm. After the war.  He said he wanted to spend more time working on biologicals and not machines."

  "Ah-hah!" Duo pulled out the black sock and tossed the bundle to Heero.  "My handheld's in there.  In the 'vid' directory, look at the folder named 'zero nine.'  Password's hash-x-g-zero-one-cap d-seven-seven-three-four."

Heero turned the slick black hardware around to look at its various ports.  "You shouldn't have told me that. And it's obvious."  At Duo's shrug, he said turned the handheld on and plugged in the cloth  keyboard which Duo had wadded up around it.  "New?"

"Yeah, I just--" Duo began when a pop from the vid unit interrupted him.  He turned back to the screen, only to find it still black.  "Hey, you don't have to roll out the red carpet or anything, but at least turn on the camera for me," he complained to the blank screen.  

"Consider yourself red carpeted," G replied dryly, features coming into focus.  His gaze shifted past Duo's shoulder to rest on Heero for a moment, before they flicked back to the figure in front of the viewscreen.  "And you would be calling because?"

"Do I need to have a reason to call up and bug the shit out of you?" The scientist hmphed and moved his hand towards his screen as if to disconnect them.  "Hey! Alright, alright.  I'm considering a career change," Duo said.  

"S knows this girl who is trying to start an improv troupe on L4. I've told you before, your propensity for emoting makes could make you an actor. Not only that, but you certainly demonstrated 'impromptu' skills in your missions." Duo made a show of rolling his eyes.  "As you see, your facial dexterity alone--"

"Yeah, terrorists are great comedians," Duo interrupted.  The handheld beeped as Heero did something to it.  "You better not be messing with that thing's programming, Heero, or I'll kill you," he threatened without looking around.  To G, he said, "I've decided to join the Preventers.  Heero and I are going to look for an apartment, so I won't be coming back to L2 for a while."

G didn't even blink for a moment.  Then, staring at Duo, he said, "Are you crazy? Moving in with J's boy--are you sick, Duo?"

"Mariemaia's soldiers caught me and doped me up." 

"Well, then."  G moved his hand again to disconnect the call.  "Have fun with your soldier boy and give Lady Janus my greetings." The screen went blank.

Duo pushed the chair back and stood.  "As if I needed to be sick to live with you," he grumbled, turning towards the bed.

"Lady Janus?" Heero asked, peeling the handheld's motherboard loose of the bottom casing.  The top of the case, filled with screws, perched on his knee.

Staring, Duo demanded, "What the hell are you doing?"

"I wanted to see what the frequency jammer you installed on this thing looked like," Heero said calmly.  He nudged the motherboard out of the way so that he could get a better view of the chips and microcards wired to the various ports.  "Lady Janus?"

Duo scowled but answered, "It's what he calls Une.  I don't know why.  Hell. I guess I'm going to have to screen her now, since you're busy with that."

"I'm almost done."

"Hmph."  Duo sat back down in front of the vid unit.  Then he smiled.  "No problem.  You can just make all the calls necessary to get us in to look at some apartments."  Ignoring Heero's sour grunt, he entered the number for the main line of the Preventers headquarters.  Might as well have fun with some of the lower-downs and make them find the higher-ups.  Calling Une's mobile number directly wouldn't be nearly as interesting.


	2. Independent Variables

All the regular disclaimer stuff applies. 

Long Odds 

2. Independent Variables

Duo juggled the sacks of groceries in his arms and shoved the key in the lock.  If he didn't drop the groceries, if the key didn't catch, if he managed to catch the door before it swung back, then he would be able to hold it open when Heero arrived in thirty seconds with the chair.  If, if, if. There were so many possibilities. He might even drop the groceries, step on a rolling can, and trip backwards down the stairs to crash into the chair and Heero just as he turned the corner of the landing.  Fortunately, that possibility was very slim. It was always encouraging when the more humiliating events had the least likelihood of occurring. 

The chance that this one might happen rapidly approached zero as the key turned smoothly in the lock; a quick twist of the doorknob had the door swinging wide, and Duo deftly planted his back against it to keep it open.  Idly calculating the angles made between the rails and posts of the staircase banister, he listened to the thumps that Heero made coming up to the landing.  "Hey, Heero," he called out, shifting one of the bags of groceries so the cold corner of a frozen dinner wasn't poking him in the stomach, "do you wanna get dinner out tonight?  Or fix it here? First night in the apartment and all."

"We have to return the truck first," Heero said as he rounded the corner, carrying an oversized chair.  For all its weight, he handled it easily. Seeing that Heero was going to arrive at the head of the stairs without mishap, Duo leaned back more comfortably against the door.  

The apartment they'd finally settled on wasn't much to look at.  The carpet was old and looking a bit mangy, the original color faded to drab tan—or maybe it had started out that way.  The paint on the walls was a sun-stained light yellow rather than a store bought cream, and it was cracked and chipping in some of the corners.  But, it was convenient, had two almost equally sized bedrooms, and the fire escape had a good view of the stars.  The view had been the deciding factor.

Duo snorted.  He might almost have said he was homesick, but he'd felt the same way on L2.

The sudden realization that Heero was about to plow into him with a piece of furniture quickly snapped Duo out of the familiar train of thoughts.  A nimble step saved him from getting hit, but when he tried to catch the door again with his heel, it became abundantly clear that there was a higher probability of his falling on his ass than of actually pulling off the maneuver.  _Shit_.

He missed the door, stumbled back two steps, and hit his back against the wall, barking his funny bone in the process.  The groceries slid a little in his grip, and a whole new set of possible outcomes sprang to mind.  Some of the more embarrassing ones had depressingly high odds.  Duo shifted the bags, managed to catch the one that was starting to rip on his knee, and without dropping the milk in the process.

The door hit Heero in the shoulder as it swung closed, but the other ex-pilot didn't even grunt an acknowledgement as he elbowed past and dropped the chair in the middle of the living room.

"That's the last of it," Heero announced without much enthusiasm.

"Yeah, that's nice, man.  Now get over here and take one of these before the bag rips all the way and we spend the next twenty minutes cleaning milk out of the carpet and picking up breakfast cereal."  Changing his hold on the ripping sack bought another ten seconds or so.  "You think I'm kidding?" he asked tartly when Heero didn't move.

Heero blinked once, the only outward sign of surprise, then marched over to take one of the bags.  Duo heaved a theatrical sigh of relief as he pushed himself away from the wall to put the groceries on the counter in the kitchenette.  "That was close," he continued.  "I'm telling you, I did not relish the idea of having to clean up that sort of mess without a vacuum."

Heero made a sound that Duo chose to interpret as an affirmative.  Hey, if the guy was going to make someone decipher nonverbal communication, he'd just have to live with the results.

"You didn't give me an answer on dinner."

"I hadn't thought about it.  Did you have something specific in mind?"  Heero asked, putting away the box of Branflakes that had nearly littered their floor.

"Not really," Duo said, peeking through the sacks in search of the raspberries they'd bought.  "I was just thinking that it's only a couple hours away, and we'll probably be tired if we're gonna spend them unpacking."  _Oh, there they are._

"There was a deli on the corner, I think.  We could get takeout," the other suggested, catching Duo before he could put the fruit on the top shelf of the fridge.  "Those go in the drawer on the bottom."

The Deathscythe pilot rolled his eyes, but moved the raspberries into one of the two drawers at the bottom of the refrigerator.  If Heero had a preference which they went in, then he could move them himself.  Snagging a couple of the berries before closing the drawer, Duo said, "Takeout works for me.  Good, that's settled.  Now we can finish putting this stuff away and get started on the boxes."

The light pressure of Heero's hand on his hip brought them closer, pressing Duo against the linoleum countertop.

"You looking to christen the counters already?" Duo asked, shoving his last raspberry in his mouth and wiping his hands on his jeans.

"Actually," Heero muttered, a little smirk turning up one corner of his lips, "you were in front of the cupboard I wanted to put the soup in."

"Oh." Duo tried to keep his expression from falling.  He'd been pretty sure that there was a good chance he was about to get laid.

"But now that you mention it. . . ." Heero's face took on a considering look. "Give me a sec to put the ice cream away first."

*~*~*

Duo finished his minestrone soup with a satisfied "Mmm."  There were so many places he and Heero hadn't had sex yet in their new apartment: the shower, the bedrooms, the laundry closet, the kitchen floor (they'd started on the counter, which was what really counted, right?), the coffee table, the fire escape.  The checklist running through his head kept growing longer.  "Okay," he said, stretching as he stood.  "Time to get back to work?"

Heero crushed the wax paper wrapper from his sandwich and tossed it in the takeout bag.  A moment later Duo's soup cup joined it, and the whole collection went in the garbage. "Where do you want to start?"

Shrugging, Heero went to the nearest box. 'Kitchen' was printed across the side in large, neatly uniform letters, which said it was one of the ones the Wing pilot had packed as much as it told the contents' destination.  Duo stretched again, enjoying the good mood that dinner and Heero had put him in.  Relaxation had been a little too scant for the last few days.  Weeks.  Months.  Whatever.  In any event, if felt nice to be able to unwind.

Choosing at random, he picked a box, tearing through the brown packing tape with his house keys.  This one said 'Bath' in the same big, legible letters; Heero had packed it, too.  Inside, he found his shampoo, shaving cream, razor and other toiletries, along with a heavy med kit.  Spare rolls of gauze, syringes, butterfly bandages and painkillers had all been tucked snuggly between the towels.  Duo smiled at the evidence of his lover's organized mind, then hefted the whole box off to the bathroom.

The bathroom was nothing to brag about.  The shower stall was just big enough for two people to fit comfortably—ignoring the fact that one of them would have to stand behind the other, so the water that reached them would be colder—and the cabinet space was unimpressive to put it generously.  Still, as the basics went, they didn't have too much.

"Duo?" He heard just as he finished putting away all four of their bath towels.  "Could you come here for a minute?"

"Yeah, I'm coming," Duo replied, not liking what he'd heard in Heero's voice.  "What did you want?"  He stepped over the half-emptied box and the bandages he'd scattered beside it while pulling out the towels and headed down the short hall towards the living room.

"Do you know where the extra ammo for the Baretta is?"  Heero was bent over the box marked 'bfg,' next to which Duo had drawn a skull and crossbones.  Heero hadn't appreciated the latter, but had reluctantly agreed that the former was better than trying to explain 'Weaponry' or 'Guns' were anyone to have been nosy when they took the boxes out of the apartment on L2.

Duo bit his lip, trying to remember if he had packed that, and if he had, where.  "Did you check with the machete?"

"Why would it be with the machete?" Heero asked, his brows drawing together over his nose in a scowl.

"I don't know," Duo told him.  "It was a guess."  He pushed past his friend to a box that said 'misc.' in shortish, rounded letters.  It was the print Duo typically used when he was faking his mother's writing for a school. Inside he found the music player with a broken earpiece, a flashlight, the machete, a number of smaller bladed weapons that hadn't fit in the other box, and a few rags.  "Not here.  Don't know what to tell you."

"Well, where did you put it?" Heero asked, still frowning as he sifted through the contents of another box.

Duo shrugged.  "I don't know.  Wherever there was space, I guess.  Don't worry, it'll turn up."

"I'm not worried," Heero shot back.  "I just don't want to have to pull the rest of the spare ammunition out so I can put it in the right spot when it turns up."

"Then put it on top.  It's not that big a deal," Duo said, turning back toward the bathroom.

"Duo," Heero snapped, with a crack in his voice Duo hadn't heard since the war.  Then, in a more controlled tone, "Just find it.  Please."

"What do you want me to do?" Even as the words left Duo's mouth, he knew they were almost certainly going piss Heero off, but he still couldn't stop them.  "I can't pull out a fucking dowsing rod and find it!  It'll turn up.  Cope."

Only fast reflexes saved him from being hit in the head as a bottle of blue glass cleaner flew through the air in a way cleaning products were never intended to.  "Shit!"  

Blue liquid sprayed outward as the bottle caved in the drywall behind it.  As it impacted, Heero made a rough noise that had Duo turning away from the dripping blue ruin to face him.

The pilot's hands were curled into white-knuckled fists, the tension clear in his rigid posture and the unyielding set of his thin shoulders.  His jaw was clenched so tightly, Duo could see the muscles jumping in his cheeks.  Nostrils flaring slightly, forehead creased in with a dark scowl that took over his whole face, Heero didn't look angry; he looked homicidal.

For a long moment, Duo just stared in shock.  Heero didn't usually loose his temper.  Not like that.  He couldn't even begin to think of what the hell might have caused that outburst, let alone how to defuse the situation.  He was still gaping when Heero visibly forced his hands open.

"Listen, I'm – " Duo paused, licking his lips "—I apologize."

"I'm sorry, too."  Heero said, his stance finally relaxing.

"Apology accepted," Duo told him quickly, letting out a sigh of relief, then glanced over his shoulder.  Apparently, he wasn't the only one feeling stressed.  And they now had a big fucking hole in the wall to prove it.  "Well, there goes our security deposit.  I'll get you some paper towels to start cleaning this up.  I _do_ remember where I packed those, and while you take care of this, I'll see if I can't 'turn up' the Baretta ammo.  Cool?"

Nodding, the guy went to start picking up the broken bottle and chunks of plaster that had fallen to the floor.  Duo nodded as well, then hurried to make good on his plan, silently grateful he had known Heero would respond badly to what he said.  Duo Maxwell may have been called hard headed a time or two, but he wasn't in a hurry to see how his skull compared to Heero's arm.

He had a pretty good idea which one would win.

*~*~*

Field stripping a pistol came easily to Heero's hands, each step calming in its familiarity. Behind him, through the thin walls, Heero could hear his housemate showering.  The regular patter of water again tile was the loudest sound in their apartment before seven in the morning.

Heero's fingers moved automatically, withdrawing the magazine.

Duo was in the shower, which meant, Duo's hair would be in the shower later, when the Wing pilot found his way there.  Normally, Duo kept his hair confined to a braid, where it behaved tamely.  Sometimes it seemed that his long hair required less attention than his own much shorter cut.  At the very least, it never got in Duo's way.  The exception to this rule seemed to be in the bathroom.

He pulled the slide back and checked the chamber out of habit—the gun wasn't loaded.

When in the bathroom, Duo took his hair down to wash it and to brush it.  He did clean out the drain after himself, but he didn't catch all the broken strands that fell on the floor, or the counter, or stuck to the walls.  Wet hairs were sticky, and when the strand was more than two feet long, it seemed worse.

Having a piece of long wet hair tangled between his toes had been a new and decidedly unpleasant experience for Heero.

He closed the slide and pulled the trigger.

_I can deal with hair in the bathroom,_ Heero told himself firmly as he pressed in the plug and turned the barrel bushing.  _I will talk to him later about being more thorough when he cleans up after himself._  

The hair wasn't the only problem though.  This morning, much to his surprise, Heero had woken up without a pillow and with a nasty kink in his neck as a result.  Duo had been clutching it possessively, pressing his back tight against the Wing pilot.

He removed the plug and the recoil spring as he remembered how Duo slept, curled around the stolen pillow and wedged against Heero's chest, as though he were perpetually cold.  An electric blanket might be a wise addition to the shopping list.  A third pillow certainly was. His hand paused, then continued removing the barrel bushing again as another thought occurred to him.

Duo slept like he was cold, or like he was trying to present a small target.  Like he was hiding.

He was also a very light sleeper; lighter even than Heero, who had caution drilled into him from his earliest memories.  Heero doubted that this was G's training manifesting.  It seemed more likely that its roots were found in Duo's childhood, which he spoke of only vaguely, sketching an incomplete picture of L2's worse districts.

Heero's hands fell back into their pattern as he removed the slide stop. What did he know about Duo's childhood?

Lifting out the recoil spring guide, he considered.  He knew that Duo Maxwell did not exist in any official sense.  He knew Duo was from an L2 colony originally.  He knew some of Duo's skills came from his youth there, rather than the education G had given him.

He inferred that Duo was an orphan, and that he had grown up with limited adult guidance.  He guessed that Duo had at some point had a brush with the Christian faith, because of his attire, and the cross, but he knew Duo wasn't religious.  What sort of good Christian would refer to himself as Shinigami—the God of Death?  He inferred that Duo had for one reason or another, come to associate himself with death.

Heero removed the barrel from the slide, and looked down at the weapon now disassembled before him as though the scraps he knew of Duo's history were laid out with them.

He hadn't realized how little he knew about his housemate's past.  It didn't particularly matter, he supposed, as he had no intention of backing out of the arrangement now.  He had told Duo the truth when he said that moving in was the logical course to take if one wanted to continue to have daily contact with another person.

Among the many bargains Duo had offered him, one had been a question for a question.  Heero frowned.  Perhaps it would be wise to take the other's offer.

The smell of solvents and oil filled the room as Heero's hands continued the ritual of cleaning his gun, and his mind continued examine his newest mission.

*~*~*

Sleep was elusive.  Duo had already stolen one pillow, wrapping his body around it protectively in his own restless sleep. Heero had yet to do more than just slip under the edge, hovering in that place where he was aware of what was around him, but not conscious of it.  Not really awake, but not really asleep either, he tossed and turned, trying to find the right position or the right state of mind to actually drift off.  The room wasn't more than warm, but a fine sweat broke out on his body.

Duo muttered something as Heero stirred, and his hand snaked behind him to tug away his partner's remaining pillow.  Heero rolled onto his belly, though he always slept on his back, and pressed his face into the cool sheets. Relax, he commanded himself ineffectively.  But he couldn't.

If it were possible, he dreamt half-awake.  In his dreams, he was in Wing's cockpit again, the controls at his command… and he detonated.  Again and again he detonated.  Or sometimes he fought until his Gundam fell to pieces.  He didn't see it, his eyes, open again, saw Duo's hair and the creases in the white sheet in the grainy, blue ambient light that flooded in though their naked window.

_Curtains…_ Heero thought vaguely, struggling out of the dream briefly.  Perhaps the light was the problem.

Then the feeling was back, like his whole body was thrumming along with Wing's engines.  And Wing was disintegrating around him.  His hand fisted in the sheets and he groaned, twisting back toward awareness, kicking off his blanket in the process.

"Shit," Duo slurred in a gravelly morning voice, and Heero thought for a moment that he'd woken the other pilot, but he continued, "Heero, if you don't get to that before I do, I swear to _god_ that there will be one less telemarketer in the world tomorrow."

"Duo," he said, "there's no—"

The vid unit in the corner beeped, interrupting him.

"Gah!" Duo shouted into one of his pillows, then flung himself out of bed to stumble toward the phone.  His hand hit the receive button with a plastic crack, and a round, feminine face appeared on the screen.  "No, we don't want any!  There is no lady-of-the-fucking-house, and even if there was, she'd be sleeping because it's five-fifty-eight in the goddamned morning."

"But, sir, I—"

"If you call back again, I will personally trace this call, and blow up the entire fucking building it came from!" the irate young man continued, running over her protests.  "Good bye."

The vid screen blanked out before Duo could shut it off.  The girl, it seemed, had some common sense.  Duo returned to bed, blinking his eyes dazedly and muttering about the indecency of molesting people while they were trying to sleep. 

"Duo," Heero began, unsure how to voice the question forming in his mind.  _Duo, how did you know that was a telemarketer?  How did you know that it would ring at all?_

"Sorry, man," Duo said, returning to the warm spot he'd left behind in the bed.  "Get me up when it's actually a human hour, alright?"

Heero nodded dumbly.  His list of things he knew about his housemate might be in need of some revisions.

*~*~*


	3. Outlying Data

Here's the third vignette in the series; typical disclaimers and all that apply. Post-EW, AUish, newtypes, R for language. 

-------------------------------

3. Outlying Data.

"Your names, sirs?" the guard asked at the check-in desk.  

"Duo Maxwell and Heero Yuy."  Heero watched Duo follow the words up with a smile.  Duo made everything seem easy, from talking comfortably with people to piloting his Gundam to knotting a tie.  It had only taken him one try to get his looking proper this morning, while Heero had finally given up on the button-down shirt entirely and just pulled on his jacket over a short-sleeved shirt instead.  

Flipping a few sheets over the top of a clipboard, the guard's eyes scanned down the page before he nodded. "You're on my pass list.  Identifications, please."  

Heero had his out and had gotten a nod from the guard before he caught the glint in Duo's eye. An attempt to forestall the other with a glare failed as Duo just nonchalantly proffered his card between two fingertips.  The gate guard looked at it and frowned.  "You're Duo Maxwell?" 

"Certainly am."  

Duo's expression of attentiveness was a thin veneer over the amusement Heero could observe lying below the surface.  He was as reliable as a Taurus with a malfunctioning gyroscope when he got like that.  "Duo," Heero said warningly.  This was not the appropriate kind of first impression to be making at the place of their future employment.

The guard cleared his throat. "This card says you're not."

Making a show of surprise after glancing at the card, Duo said, "Would you look at that!  My bad--I must have picked the wrong one."  He returned it to his wallet and selected another card.  "Here you go. Sorry about that, man."

Grimly, the guard said, "This one is for a 'Duot Virnikov.'"

"Aw, shit. 'Scuse my language," Duo said cheerfully as he returned the second card to his wallet and pulled out a sheaf of others. He fanned them in one hand and began flicking through them with the forefinger of his other.  "Just a sec."

The guard glanced askance at the handful of false identification cards.  "And you guys are walking in here [i]freely[/i]?  No offense to you, sir," he added to Heero.

"Must've woken up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," said Duo, false apology in his voice.  

He ignored the sharp look Heero sent at him.  Giving up on trying to get Duo to expedite whatever game he was playing, Heero said stiffly to the guard, "None taken.  He--"

"There!"  Duo announced his success and held out another card to the guard.

After looking at it suspiciously, the guard nodded once and said, "Thank you, sir. If you will both please step in the booth, I'll call for a confirmation."

As soon as Duo had entered after him, Heero, with one look at the camera, snapped, "What was that for?"  Fighting to keep his hands from fisting, he unzipped his jacket partway and pushed his hands into its pockets.  The other pilot was acting unacceptably, was jeopardizing--Heero caught himself short.  They were not on a mission.  And Duo had always been good at acting the civilian.  

"You've been tense all morning," Duo said, his smile fading into seriousness.  "I know you haven't had a decent night's sleep in days.  Hey, I didn't figure you to be this bothered by coming here. Are you sure this is what you want to do, babe? 'Cause if it isn't, we don't have to."  

Heero resisted the urge to shake Duo's hand from his shoulder, unsettled by the endearment, the casual display, and the way that both together managed to defuse the irritability that had been waiting for the right moment to strike.  "It's not that," he said uncomfortably.   Things were fine. He was fine. Flashbacks were acceptable consequences of the mind's response to war.  It was normal to be kept awake by them, even if remembering Wing's final moments . . . sucked.  Sometimes Duo's vocabulary could be surprisingly fitting.  

"Yeah?"  Duo's skepticism was apparent in the lift of his eyebrows as Heero looked back at him.  

Heero nodded once, relieved that Duo didn't question further. "Yeah."  

Use of Duo's casual term earned Heero a quick grin.  "Look at that," said Duo, folding his arms across his chest and leaning one shoulder against the wall opposite the video camera. "You've learned something from me."

Heero censored a comment on chicanery and applied chemistry, opting for a more neutral, "Yes."  When Duo's demeanor took on a smug air, he added, watching the other closely, "You don't like telemarketers."

Duo stared at him blankly, then blinked in recollection.  "Does anyone?" he asked.  "And the call woke me up, too.  Do you think they sell anti-spam software for vid units that would let us block them?"

Shrugging, Heero said, "I don't know. We could probably write some," even as he contemplated Duo's response.  His roommate never seemed to have registered that he had done anything out of the ordinary.  Maybe--

"Tampering with a vid unit breaks several international laws," interrupted a familiar voice from the speaker below the camera.  "Perhaps I should recommend Une reconsider her offers to the two of you."

"Good morning to you too, Wufei," Duo replied flippantly.  "Is all well in the land of law and order?"

"Now that I've reassured the gate guard that your presence here is legitimate, yes.  Let me remind you that carrying false identification is also illegal.  Chang out."

Duo sighed, pushing past the curtain to leave the booth on Heero's heels. "Damn, but he's got a stick up his ass," he said in an affectionate undertone as the guard waved them past.  "And he's only been here a month longer than us!  Heero," he added, turning around to push the building door open with his back against it so he could keep talking, "if I start quoting rules and regulations thanks to this job, it will be your fault, and I'll make you kill me."

"I wouldn't kill you," Heero protested mildly as they approached a man broad enough to make two of them who sat at the reception desk.  He gave them an assessing look. It was one familiar to Heero, the quick check for the tale-tale signs of shoulder harnesses, weapons tucked in waistbands, strapped to calves--He stopped himself before his mind could supply him with a list of further possibilities.  Civilians. They were civilians, at least for the moment.

"You save it for Relena, is that it? I get it now."  Before Heero could contradict him, Duo announced to the receptionist, "We're here for an appointment with Une."  

Finishing his quick study of them, the man said, "Take a left past the security devices; any of those elevators. Eighty-third floor." He turned back to his bank of screens, their shifting images reflecting on his eyes.

Heero relaxed when they passed the metal detectors without a problem; he hadn't thought to tell Duo not to bring any weapons with him.  Oblivious to his concerns, Duo's distaste for the security measures was apparent in his tone as they waited for the elevator in the empty hallway.  "Isn't this sort of pointless?  Offhand, I can think of at least five ways to get in here, armed, without triggering those detectors."

"It's worse at the embassy."

Duo made a face.  "Well, you'd know."

Heero watched the lights glow in sequence as the elevator ascended.  "It's supposed to be a new era of peace."  Peace meant trust, trust that only minimal precautions were necessary.  That people shared the desire to strive for a world without war, to value and protect their peace.  He'd told Wufei that.  But Wufei had had a point, too; a soldier in a civilian's life found a life with uncomfortable deficiencies, with echoes in spaces formerly filled by a soldier's requirements.  It seemed like the Preventers might be an answer for them both.

Instead of scoffing as Heero had expected, Duo responded seriously.  "If we can make it so. I don't think it's going to be as easy as saying that."  He clasped his hands together behind his back, rolling his weight onto his toes, then rocking back onto his heels.

"No," Heero agreed, watching Duo surreptitiously finger his belt.  His earlier concerns about Duo's armed status might have had foundation after all.  Maybe the Preventers were an answer for Duo as well.  He'd agreed easily, demolishing Heero's constructed arguments with a single blow as effective as any of his explosives--he'd probably entertained some thoughts before then similar to Heero's and Wufei's own, to have answered so quickly.  Or he was throwing caution to the winds and acting as the moment inspired him.  It was hard to figure what motivated Duo at times.

The brass and wooden paneling of the elevator door slid back at the appropriate floor to reveal more utilitarian surroundings of office cubicles and dark gray carpeting.  A middle-aged woman with close-cropped brown hair questioned them as they stepped forward.  "Sirs?"

Heero scanned the room, looking for exit signs as Duo replied to the receptionist.  A moment later, Duo tugged at his elbow and, Heero's attention caught, nodded toward some of the empty chairs lined up against the wall perpendicular to the receptionist's desk. "She said it'll be a minute. Wanna sit?"

Listening to the quiet hum of the air system, Heero nodded.  Duo stretched his legs out straight in front of him and leaned against the chair's back.  Noting the other's assessing gaze following the lines of the walls, Heero nudged Duo's near leg with his knee and gave him an inquiring glance.  

Duo fidgeted, drawing his legs in and sitting up, then crossing them restlessly. "Just figuring out where the load-bearing girders are positioned," he said in a low voice. "Hard not to keep thinking like that, y'know?"

Instead of replying immediately, Heero crossed his arms and used the movement to tick off specific intervals along the walls with one finger.  When Duo raised his eyebrows, Heero answered the question quietly. "You start with the corners and the elevator shafts.  This building's about twenty years old. When it was built, EuroUnion building regulations stipulated no more than seven meters between. If you know the width of the windows--"

"Ah," Duo said, catching on easily--he'd probably been able to estimate the width of the windows within a few millimeters after a single glance at the building.  Heero lifted one shoulder in a small shrug, deciding further details unnecessary.

The brisk thuds of heels on carpet heralded the approaching figure of Une.  Heero stood, Duo following suit after a moment's hesitation.  "Good morning," she greeted them briskly.  "This way, if you please."  Duo walked at Heero's shoulder as Une led them past a row of cubicles and around a corner into a sparsely furnished office.

Une gestured them to the chairs facing her desk; the motion, though crisp, lacked the arrogant brusqueness which had so characterized her during Heero's few interactions with her during the war.  "Have a seat." Une rested her elbows on her desk's polished surface and steepled her fingers. "I can't say how glad I am to have you join us.  We've been lucky with staff and funding so far, but even so we've been stretched thin--or else I'd like to think this incident with Mariemaia wouldn't have occurred."

"How many operatives do you have?" Heero asked, leaning back in the seat.  It was sturdy wood, this chair; Odin had once explained that executives preferred them, but if you needed, you could break them and use one of the legs to--  That idea got caught up short, too.

Une tapped a pen on the topmost paper in a restless gesture.  Did her dreams ever wake her, feeling sick as from a blow to the gut?  Heero kept his expression impassive as he impatiently directed his attention back to her reply.   "Six field agents, including your comrade Chang, and Zechs.  Ten analysts and their administrative staff.  Two sysadmins.  My aide, Martje, whom you met.  That's all."

Duo whistled.  "Poor funding?"

"In part. The ESUN Security Council just agreed to increase our budget, but the Finance Committee harbors several who view our efforts as an unnecessary drain on expenses: after all, if we prevent some violence from occurring, how are we to claim our intervention--and our expenditures--as vital?  It might not have occurred anyway.  I've already been audited once this year.  So," Une said with a fleeting quirk of her lips, "you see that having you, Chang, and Zechs join helps me send a message to those bureaucrats about how serious our work is, and how seriously people like yourselves take it.  In addition to being able to make use of your skills for our own efforts."  

Heero frowned. "You plan to announce that we were Gundam pilots."

Une turned her pen upside down, then right side up, and tapped it atop her papers again.  "Not in the sense you mean: I don't intend to make a production of this to the media. As far as the public is considered, whom I hire is my own business, and the less they know, the more flexibility you'll have as an operative.  But to some ESUN representatives, I will have to explain who you are in order to justify hiring people of your age and expected lack of experience."

"L2 law enforcement knows who I am," Duo said.  When Heero and Une fixed their glances on him, he added by way of explanation, "They stopped by a couple times this past year, while I was working for Hilde. Just to let me know they knew and were keeping an eye on me."

"You are the most recognizable of the pilots," Une agreed.

Heero muttered, "Because you got captured."

"Hey!" Duo said, his eyes narrowing.  "I'm not the only responsible party here."  He traded a sharp-edged smile with Une.  "Besides, 03 is the one who does organizational infiltration, not me. So it's not that big a deal. I just do--did--site infiltration. To blow things up," he continued pointedly.  "Not exactly a valuable skill anymore."

"You can defuse, too," Heero said.

"Well, yeah."  

Heero could tell that it sounded to Une as though, if it didn't result in a big mess afterwards, it didn't count for much with Duo.  As far as Heero knew, however, it was more for show than practice; bathroom hair aside, Duo picked up after himself in their apartment with the habitual neatness of someone accustomed to erasing signs of his passage.  Not to mention his efficiency with his Gundam.  Maybe that was what Heero ought to ask him about first, what he'd done before working for G.  Or perhaps about the phone call instead. 

"Our mission is to defuse situations, figuratively speaking," Une said, refusing to rise to Duo's bait.  "With regard to 03, do you think he or 04 would be willing to join, if you were to ask?"

Heero shook his head. "03 has a job he likes, and 04 obligations he won't set aside. Unless it were an emergency."

Une set the pen down and tucked her hair behind her ears, leaning back in her chair.  Her eyebrows arched in what might be amusement. "And you two had neither? Why now, and not a year ago when I made my first offer to you?"

"Our priorities changed," Heero said.   

He felt a brief flicker of satisfaction as he saw Duo close his mouth on whatever answer he had been prepared to give.  Duo said with a shrug, "That fits.  Besides, had to give the old home thing one last chance."

"Fair enough.  A few last points, and then I'll send you to Martje for getting you entered into our records and such.  One: I assume, like Chang, that you're both still underage?"  At their nods, she continued. "It will be easy to arrange for independent status for you both, but local laws--which the ESUN does not override--require a certain level of education.  You can opt to test out of it, which is what Chang did, but I might ask you to take classes from time to time regardless, as I see them useful to your assignments with us.  That's something I may ask of any agent. Understand?"

That was said almost as if she expected a "Yes, sir!" in response, Heero thought.  He nodded again instead. 

"How could we turn down a chance to improve ourselves?" Duo asked rhetorically. "I've got no problem with that."

"Second: you'll be assigned to separate agents for a shadowing period, as you get accustomed to how we work here.  Yuy, you'll partner with Noin; Maxwell, you with Durstang. He started out as a military analyst for the L3 government before joining White Fang, did some hacking for them.  You won't be partnered with each other immediately."

"I don't think we were expecting to.  I mean, I wasn't.  I can't speak for Heero.  Had you thought that, Heero?"

"No," Heero said.  He was in Duo's company enough as it was.  Work required nothing less than a professional approach.  His relationship with Duo might have grown out of professional circumstances, but it wasn't professional now.  Heero wanted to keep that separation intact.  

"Then we're fine," Une resumed.  "Third, and this is something I particularly ask of all the agents, please take care with the paperwork.  I know you weren't in the habit of documenting your activities during the war--" This earned a crack of laughter from Duo and a quipped, "Deathscythe Form 3B: Reimbursements for mayhem, creation of."  Une's lips thinned in a slight smile before she continued, "--but like I said earlier, we're answerable to the ESUN, and your reports will help me keep all our asses covered with the bureaucrats."

"Funding," Heero noted in agreement.

Une nodded, rising from her seat.  "Not only that, but right now we have fairly broad permissions in terms of crossing political boundaries and acting as we see fit under the mandate we were given by the ESUN.  Not being able to answer questions because someone forgot to fill in a situation report could endanger that, and consequently endanger our effectiveness.  I've no desire to see this organization become a castrated oubliette for ex-mil undesirables."

Duo winced, rising. "As opposed to a ballsy refuge for ex-mil undesirables?"

Une came around her desk and led them to the door.  "Soldiers do need to find a place in a world without war.  But do you see yourself as one of the undesirables?"

"Oh, I'm very desirable," Duo said with a speaking look at Heero behind Une's back.  Heero glared at him.  

"I, for one, am pleased to have you with us."  As Une took them past a row of empty cubicles, Duo shrugged and smiled in the face of Heero's irritability.  Fighting a rising surge of irritation--Duo was acting no differently than he ever did, Heero told himself, and shook his head in answer as Duo's brows drew together and his smile faded--Heero imposed a sense of dispassion over himself as they walked into what had to be, judging from the scent of coffee and a refrigerator, a break room.  

Une stopped, facing a tall man whose thin shoulders and unbalanced posture spoke a lack of martial training.  "Durstang, I thought I'd find you here."  

The man started in surprised, then hissed as the sudden movement slopped steaming liquid over the rim of his cup and onto his hand.  "Director, er--good morning," he said, setting the cup down and grabbing a napkin to mop at the spill.  "I was just. . . ."  He trailed off as he turned around to throw the napkin away and caught sight of Heero and Duo.  "What can I do for you, Director?"

"Maxwell and Yuy are our two newest agents.  You'll be working with Maxwell.  Since Noin is out today, I'd like you to take them by Martje so she can get started on their paperwork, then show them through our facilities.  They'll probably like the simulators especially.  Gentlemen," Une finished with a nod to Heero and Duo, "a good morning to you.  I'll leave you in Durstang's hands."

The man's faintly worried expression relaxed in a smile as Une left.  "She really has a way of appearing when I least expect it," he said by way of explanation, and threw the damp napkin in the trash.  He wore a shoulder harness for a left-hand draw.  "I'm Chas," he said, and held out his right hand.

Duo met the proffered hand first and shook it. "Duo, then.  Have you worked here long?"  

Durstang nodded, picking up his mug after Heero forestalled a handshake with a nod.  "Lucrezia and Sally and I were the first to join.  The director told you I used to work for White Fang, right?"  While Duo confirmed that, Heero watched Durstang study the two of them before he asked, "You two are associates of Chang's?"

With a grin, Duo said, "Was it the age, the height, or badass attitudes which tipped you off?"  

Apologetically, Durstang said, "The ages--and the timing.  Lucrezia knew Chang in the wars, so with him being a Gundam pilot, and with other Gundams having helped out in the Mariemaia situation, and with new agents showing up who are his age. . . ."

"Man, I've got to be the only person in the universe who's looking [i]forward [/i]to getting older.  No more weird looks then." Duo declared as Durstang ushered them out of the coffee room and through the rows of cubicles.  In some, people more casually dressed than Durstang studied computer screens or typed: probably the analysts or their assistants.  Other cubicles were empty, not even filled with a desk--an expanding organization indeed.

"Age doesn't help with that," Durstang said in a doleful tone.  "My wife gives me those all the time.  --Martje, good morning," Durstang greeted the receptionist Duo had spoken to earlier.

"These are the director's two newest agents?" the woman asked cheerfully.  "Glad to have you with us.  This should take just a moment.  One of you have a seat there," she said, indicating a chair placed to the side of her desk.  She adjusted a digital camera mounted on her monitor to face the chair squarely.  When Duo sat, she moved her hands back to her keyboard. "Name and identification number?"  

"Duo Maxwell and--"  Heero saw his hand brush past his jacket in what looked like a restless gesture; but it was the pocket in which Duo typically kept his wallet.  With a break perceptible probably to Heero alone of those present, Duo said lightly, "--I don't have one.  Not an officially real one, anyway. I have several, but all the records have all been faked."

"Neither do I." Heero watched surprise flicker over Durstang's and Martje's expressions.  He said flatly, to stall any inquiries, "We're both orphans."  

Despite the questions that left unanswered, the finality in his tone was enough to close Durstang's mouth and keep Martje from saying anything but, "I see. That's something I can take care of for you, then, when I also file the independent minor's claims.  I'm guessing you're about the age of Mr. Chang?"

"Yes."  Duo caught Heero's gaze and gave Heero one of his lopsided smiles; Heero felt his own mouth relaxing in response before he looked away and said, "Is that all?"

Martje pressed a button on her keyboard; the camera flashed.  She said, "Not quite. It's your turn, now, Mr.--"

"Heero Yuy," he said, taking the seat Duo vacated.

"Really," Martje said, surprised. "Your parents--"  She caught herself short and flushed.  "I'm sorry."

"I didn't know them," Heero replied with a shrug.  Not that they'd been responsible for his name even so, but that explanation was one he was not interested in giving.

"I'm so sorry," she repeated.  Obviously bothered by the faux pas, she dropped the pencil she was handing Duo along with a piece of paper.  Duo caught it before it could hit the surface of her desk.  "Oh, thank you," she said, flustered, then continued more calmly, "If you'll fill this out, please, Mr. Maxwell.  And--"  A moment of typing, a flash of the camera, and Heero was handed a similar paper and pen. "If you'll fill this out, Mr. Yuy."

Durstang chatted idly with Martje as Heero filled in the questions on the paper.  Address, height, weight, hair and eye color, blood type:  all were easily answered.  Birth date. . . . He hesitated, then put down "April 5" and the year; he supposed the date of his arrival to earth would serve, since that marked the first time references to him--even if they didn't know who he was--had appeared in other records than J's own, once he'd started attacking various targets.  And birth involved appearing in records for the first time.  Place of birth. . . . L1, as far as he knew.  That went under the country/colony designation; he left the line for city/colony number blank, and wondered how Duo was finding these questions.  A glance at him showed Duo, his expression closed, moving his pencil methodically down the page.  Heero looked back at his own paper. 

Next of kin. . . . It would have to be Duo.  The same for his first emergency contact; Relena became the second.  He wondered whom Wufei had listed, then read through the bottom half of the page and all of the small print on back about the nondisclosure agreement, annual physical and psychological examinations, and weapons carrying permissions--which depended upon passing a range exam first, a thought that made him snort mentally; Odin and then J had tested him more thoroughly and under more severe conditions than any shooting range could offer--and signed.  

"Done," he said laconically, handing the paper to the receptionist a moment before Duo finished reading over his responses and passed the paper along to Martje.  Heero took a breath.  The world didn't exactly feel different around him, but he wasn't a civilian any longer.  He wasn't exactly a soldier either--at best the Preventers could be considered paramilitary--but all the same, this put him in a position to protect the peace that had cost him Wing.  He knew he'd sleep better tonight.  

"All set!  Now back to the circus?" Duo asked with a grin to Durstang.

"So I'm a Ringmaster?" Durstang said, sounding resigned. "I suppose that's better than a clown."

Martje gave each of them a card, though she had to wait until Duo stopped snickering to give him his. He said, "I wouldn't bet on it. I've known a clown who could kick twenty OZzie ass on a bad day--pretty dangerous characters, clowns. Never know what to expect from them."

Durstang gave Duo a doubtful smile.  He wasn't quite sure, Heero suspected, whether Duo was simply exaggerating for the sake of the humor or spoke with a grain of truth.  Martje interjected before Durstang could reply, saying, "Almost but not quite.  I need to ask you two a few questions for the independent minor's claims."

"Why don't I go grab some more coffee and come back in a couple minutes, in that case?  Can I get anyone else a cup while I'm at it?" Durstang said.

"I'll have one," Duo said.  "Black's fine."

Heero glanced at his Preventers ID before using its clip to fix it to his shirt.  "What do you want to know?" he asked Martje as Durstang walked away.

The receptionist seated herself at her computer again and retrieved a file with a few taps on the keyboard.  "How long have you been responsible for yourself?"

"Since April of 195," Heero said.

A glance at Duo showed him looking as if he'd bitten a lemon.  "I'll say the same thing."  He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and then added reluctantly, "Most recently, anyway."

"And your income derives from what sources?" 

"Since the war, odd jobs. This job," Heero said.

Beside him, Duo nodded. "Yeah, my own efforts.  No trust fund here.  Although I guess I'd still want to work, even if I did have a trust fund.  Can you imagine lying around all day, doing nothing?  That'd be the pits."

"Oh, I could," Martje said fervently enough to make Duo chuckle.  "And I'd travel, see the sights; I haven't done that much.  Alright.  Did you file tax returns for the past year?"

"Yeah," Duo replied with a grimace.  "Do you need copies of those?  They're tied to one of my fake identification numbers."

Martje paused for a moment, then said, "Yes, you had better send it to me; it will make things easier, especially if you filed them under your own name?"  At Duo's nod, she asked, "How about you, Mr. Yuy?"

Heero shook his head once. "No.  I didn't . . . formally register my employment with any local governing agencies."

Martje looked only somewhat puzzled by his choice of words, while Duo looked at him with an all-too sharp expression.  Heero tried not to scowl as Martje responded.  Duo was probably going to want to ask questions about this.  "Alright.  Mr. Maxwell, I think you'll be set without too much trouble, given the documentation your tax records will provide. Mr. Yuy, yours may be a bit more difficult.  Are there any adults who could testify to your independent status?"

The thought of trying to find J to ask him this, let alone getting him to agree to lend his name to any sort of legal proceedings, had as much chance of success as Heero suspected he had of getting a bathroom free of Duo's hair.  "N--" he began, before Duo interrupted him with a hand to his arm.

"Hey, Heero, Howard could help if you needed him to.  He's known you just about as long as he's known me."

"--Yes," Heero said, grudgingly.  Now he'd have to allow Duo's questions with good grace.  

Duo smiled, punched him lightly on the biceps, and said to Martje, "I can give you his contact info.  And get yours for the tax records."

Heero studied Duo thoughtfully as he swapped the information with Martje.  The mission he'd set for himself--its parameters had just developed some definition, he thought.  He needed to know more than what he could fill in between the lines of what Duo had said to Martje, especially if he were going to field questions for them again.  Now, however, he had some ideas as to what he might ask.

*~*~*

Duo rubbed his arm absently while Sally put away his blood sample.  "Shouldn't you be on a mission, though, instead of doing this?  I thought you'd joined up as an agent, not a house doc."

"Well," Sally said cheerfully, sealing the vial of blood and labeling it, "I should be.  There was a hitch, however, and the director asked me to take a look at the two of you in favor of letting the police docs at you--"

Ignoring the twinge from his arm, Duo shrugged back into his shirt.  At least she hadn't made him keep the stupid hospital gown on once she freed him from that mistaken excuse for a soft-tissue scanner.  He hadn't worn one of those since--since--  His mind supplied him with the memory and he choked back a laugh.  Since he and Heero had gotten it on right after Heero'd hauled him out of that OZ clink.  They hadn't left much of the gown for salvage afterwards.  At least he'd had injuries on which to blame the resulting stiffness.  "What kind of hitch?" he asked to distract himself. Explaining a hard-on to Sally was not on his list of top things to do.

Shutting the refrigerator door, Sally straightened, slipping her hands into the pockets of the white coat she was wearing over her Preventers uniform.  With her braids, it made her look like a kid playing dress-up.  Duo weighted the temptation to tell her that after she grinned at him as he finished buttoning up his shirt.  "Would you take a bet that Une has already said something to you about filling out forms?"

Duo gave her a curious look.  "No, I wouldn't.  Why?"  He slipped the tie Sally had provided him off the end of his braid and fished his own elastic from a pants pocket, twisting it around several times before letting loose of it.  

Sally's eyes sparkled with a rueful amusement.  "I thought so.  That's only the tip of the iceberg, as you'll soon see.  Martje is coming up with more forms than L4's got resource satellites.  She's devoted to Une, and when Une said that a well-written form would be one more weight off her mind. . . . "

Duo leaned back, bracing his hands on the examination table.  The weird paper napkin on top of it crackled as he moved.  "Let me guess.  You used the wrong form?"

"Worse," Sally said solemnly.  "I used the wrong [i]version [/i]of a form."  

Duo couldn't keep a grin off his face even after they stopped laughing.  "No need for bad guys to hamper us in the pursuit of our duties.  We can take care of that for ourselves!  So you got stuck here to fill out paperwork, huh, and Heero and I are creating more for you?"

Sally waved that away with a brush of her hand as she sat on the chair behind the room's small medical terminal.  "It's not that bad.  You Gundam pilots are an interesting set.  And I agree with the director when she said she'd prefer to keep your records as close to our chests as possible.  I did Wufei's physical, too."

"Heh. I bet that was fun," Duo said.  Sally gave him a bland look before she returned to scanning the data output from the earlier tests.  He shifted restlessly.  Examination tables made him feel like a kid, the way his feet couldn't touch the floor.   Too bad there was nothing interesting enough to bother stealing in compensation.  "So, we done yet?"

"Just a few questions left," Sally said absently, pressing the keyboard to access some other sort of information, Duo guessed.  When she didn't immediately continue, Duo cleared his throat pointedly.  "Yes, sorry.  You're just--it's so interesting."  She finally looked away and smiled. "Can't blame a doctor for being fascinated with her own field.  Just a few questions more and then we can send you off to catch up with Heero."

"Fire away, doc."  

Sally scooped up a pen and the clipboard that held the questionnaire he had filled out while Heero had been getting his exam.  "You . . . left your parents' medical history information blank."  Her voice was neutral, and Duo hated it immediately and intensely.  "You don't have any knowledge about that?"

"No," he said, practice keeping him from cutting the word off before it got out of his mouth.   "I'm afraid not," he added, knowing the words sounded careless.  That was just the effect he desired from them.  He watched her face carefully as he fielded the next few questions with an apparent lack of self-consciousness, though he considered several responses to each of her questions, searching for the ones with the least probability of leading to any comment.

There was no way he could have avoided the last question of that set, however; he saw it coming and knew he wasn't going to be able to evade it.  ". . . . and then she said it was thanks to his being a newtype.  You've heard of newtypes, I take it?"  

They were both dancing around each other verbally now, Duo knew; Sally was trying to close in on him without triggering a mine, and he was in the midst of that minefield.  "Hasn't everyone?" he asked.  Thing was, if he were careful, he could avoid those and lay a few of his own making. "Tell you the truth, I feel sorta sorry for 'em."  

'Them'--that was his fuse.  Sally followed after it, as he had hoped that she would. "It's pretty different on earth."  That was her message to him.  He didn't even blink, maintaining his relaxed posture as she continued.  "I've heard it can be pretty tough for them on the colonies."

He smiled, controlling his response within a hairsbreadth of the perfect register of sympathy for some hypothetical 'other' mixed with the willingness to oblige a medical professional.  "You've got that right.  I knew this kid--" he made an expression of commingled sorrow and distaste.  

Sally commiserated appropriately.  "I'm very sorry.  I hope he wasn't a relative of yours."  That was a good one on her part.  Any answer he made put him within reach of another mine. 

"Just another street kid, y'know?" he answered.  "We saw those things all the time.  Not too unusual."  That was it; he could see it in her eyes: the play for sympathy was almost always effective, and it wasn't like she didn't have the information already to have pieced that detail together for herself.  "Glad I'm not like that."  That was his finger triggering the fuse.  Truth and dust tossed in the eyes together.  

"You must have led a charmed life."  At his snorted response, she signaled her defeat with another question.  "You said you didn't have any allergies.  Do you have any tolerances to particular medications?"

Duo relaxed his alertness, pleased with himself.  He could still amuse a mark with the best of the L2 hands.  "Standard interrogation drugs," he replied immediately; this one was an easy question.  Half the OZ officers in the Sphere already knew the answer. "Thiopental sodium, sodium amytal, the entire emphalituate class, psilobarbital, and trihyolapten.  Any of those'll induce anaphylaxis."  The pen scratched his answer down.

"What about sedatives?"

"The usual benzodiazephines and barbituates.  Alprazolam, diazepham, chlorazepate, ativan, librium, amobarbital, alurate, butisol," he said, rolling the names off his tongue with a little nostalgic relish.  One thing Duo regretted about peace was the way it reduced the number of ways he could die.  Unless some idiot was loose on the streets and injecting people regularly with a concoction of any of his susceptibilities, peace had cost him several ways out.  When plague couldn't even give you the runs, knowing that someone else out there could knock you on your ass one final time was reassuring.  And it suited him that those means had been given to him through a man's hands--no natural immunity on his part.  G truly fit the nickname Duo'd given him. 

"On any medications?"

"No," he said, giving her a little smile.  "Do you think I should be?"

Sally chuckled appreciatively and moved on.  More questions and more scratching of the pen on paper.  Duo stopped paying much attention to them.  He responded automatically—his mouth rarely required supervision from his brain for this sort of routine questioning.  It was perfectly capable of operating on its own most of the time without embarrassing him or giving away anything he didn't want it to.  He slipped habitually into the charming persona that had served him well more than once during the war, and before, when he'd used his grin and casual attitude to distract the plugs whose wallets he'd dived.

His mind was wandering somewhere on L2, wondering if the shopping district on the Circle was still the best place to lift purses, when Sally said something that jolted him back to the little doctor's office.

"Come again?"

"You were pretty fortunate to have survived the war so unscathed."

Duo couldn't help it.  He laughed.  Hard.  "Are you kidding?" he said when he caught his breath.  "I probably got more beat up than anyone but Heero."

Sally pulled the tip of her pen out of her mouth in surprise. "Really? The pair of you are in such good shape, I would have guessed you never got injured."

"Hospitals were our playgrounds," Duo informed her, still chuckling.  When she continued to give him a dubious look, he added, "Heero blew himself up once.  He was in a coma for over a month."

Sally blinked.  "Was he?  I'll have to look at his soft tissue scans more closely, I think.  After being down that long, we'd normally expect to see more brain damage."

"Huh.  That might explain a bit about Heero," Duo said cheekily.

"What injuries have you had?"

He began to reel them off, his thoughts strolling again to the Circle.  He hadn't been back there this past year on L2; Hilde operated on a different colony in the cluster, and the one time she'd had a project there, he had been busy doing some salvage for her with Howard's group, so hadn't even been asked to go.  Maybe they'd patched up that broken sewage grate on 129th Street by now.  That'd lose someone a good hidey, if so.  But given the rate at which L2 completed noncritical infrastructure repairs. . . . Sally drew his attention back as her voice took on a recognizable "winding-down" cadence.

"Just one more question, then," Sally said, making another mark on her clipboard.  "Do you use drugs?"

"Nope.  Not my scene" he said, a little surprised she bothered with the question.  "Are you going to ask me if I'm sexually active, too?"

"I should hope so," she responded, winking.  "Mr. Yuy would be terribly disappointed if you just lie there."

Taken off guard, Duo laughed.  There was a reason he'd liked Sally.

"Alright then," she said, putting the last punctuation on what she was writing.  "I think you can leave now.  But hurry, before I think of something else to do with you to distract me from those waiting forms."  She winked as she stood and opened the door for him.

"Sorry, doc, you ain't my type."

*~*~*

Heero pressed the button to retrieve the target paper, passing it to the arms instructor, who Durstang had introduced as a member of the Bremen police with whom the Preventers shared the range.  "Not bad," the man mouthed before Heero removed his earmuffs and protective glasses.  "Let's go back to the others."

Duo had arrived while Heero was shooting, and was chatting with Durstang.  Their conversation broke off as Heero approached; Duo's quick glance flicked from the sheet to Heero.  Reaching up to clasp his hands behind his head, Duo used the movement to cloak a thumbs-up gesture as he leaned against the wall.  Heero shifted his attention to Durstang, who was staring at the sheet in open puzzlement.  "All disabling shots?" the older agent asked.

"Yes," said the instructor.  "I'm passing him; the accuracy and speed make him one of the better marksmen you guys have."

Durstang said, "But I thought you were trained as a soldier, Yuy?"

Heero shrugged.  "A Preventer isn't the same thing."  To the instructor, he said, "Thank you."

"No problem, kid," the portly man said, eyeing Duo and the agent's badge clipped to his jacket.  "Durstang, what is this? You guys cradle-robbing all of a sudden?  First that other kid, now these two--what's with?  Are we going to have to bust you for illegal employment of minors?"

Taking the sheet from the instructor and folding it, Durstang said, "Not up for public consumption, Mikeal.  It's legit, though.  But," he added with a grin, "if I told you, I'd have to kill you."

"Since when are we the public?" the policeman grumbled.  "Fine, then, I won't ask. But some of the other guys might not be so polite as me."

"Yeah, you're a pattern of etiquette," Durstang agreed.  "Duo, you ready to go next?"

"Sure," Duo said, lowering his hands and accepting the gun from the instructor.  "You want me to start by field stripping and cleaning this, right?"  When the instructor nodded, he took a seat at the table Heero had used earlier for the same purpose.  

Duo, Heero decided as he watched, didn't really care for guns all that much.  He handled the Baretta a little too casually, though he was thorough in his attention to it.  But when Heero noticed that all the parts were being placed into a geometric pattern in relation to each other, he knew Duo had to be operating by some unknown set of rules probably designed for little more than keeping him engaged with a task otherwise found tedious: so many seconds allotted to remove each component, the amount of pressure applied while cleaning perhaps derived from a random calculation that made sense only to Duo.  There was method to it, that Heero could tell; but it wasn't one that involved more than nominal respect for the weapon.  No wonder Duo hadn't been bothered when the ammo had ended up being packed with the flatware.

"Good," the instructor said after a moment's hesitation when Duo had finished.  Heero couldn't tell if the pause was due to his having picked up on what Duo was doing, or some other cause.  "Let's see how you handle it on the range."  Heero flicked his glance towards the square of paper Durstang held, then back to Duo to see if the other had caught it.  Duo's mouth quirked at one corner as he nodded, then followed the instructor past the sliding doors to the range.

"What was that about?" Durstrang asked, focusing on the two on the far side of the glass wall as they pulled on earmuffs.  

"What?" Heero asked, observing the way Duo kept his shoulders and feet in alignment without even seeming to think about it.  The florescent lighting gleamed dully on Duo's hair as he averted his face from watching the target paper the instructor sent out.

"That look you gave him."

"That," Heero said, jerking his eyes away as soon as he realized he'd stopped analyzing and started admiring the sight.  Looking at Durstang, he said, "He's going to try to match his shots with mine."

"He is?"  Durstang's eyebrows lifted in surprise. 

Heero's gaze slid back to the range.  In front of them, the instructor touched Duo's shoulder to give him the go-ahead; Duo raised his arms and brought his head around in the same moment, reeling off five shots in quick succession.  "He's good at calculating distances," Heero said.

"You learned that while training with him?"

Heero set aside the urge to frown.  The question was strange; but then, Durstang was going to be Duo's partner for at least a while, and should know something about Duo's capabilities; who knew what Une would tell him.  "He's the best pilot of us all," he said in explanation.  On the range, the instructor pressed the recall button for the target sheet.

"He was the pilot of 01?" Durstang asked.

This time Heero did frown, irritated by the assumption that his more public actions somehow made him a more skillful pilot. "No. I'm 01, and he's better. He was 02."   Duo and the instructor conferred over the target sheet for a moment; with their backs to Heero, he couldn't read lips to figure out what was going on.  But moments later, a fresh target sheet was being sent down the line.

"Oh, the one with the cloaking device?  That makes sense," Durstang concluded. "Pair up the stealthy pilot with a hacker."

"He's a hacker, too," Heero said.  "Better at phreaking, though."  Duo turned his back on the range and waved at them through the glass, holding the gun in his left hand.  Figuring out what was going to happen, Heero paid closer attention and--yes. Maybe it was just because of reflection on the window-glass, but a split second before the instructor touched him, Duo had tensed in readiness.  Perhaps it wasn't just reflexes and his spatial sense that had made him so good a pilot.

"And you'd have to be one yourself to evaluate the difference," Durstang said without further comment.  He hadn't noticed, in that case.  Durstang continued, "Nor is Chang a slouch, either.  The man's a good fighter, knows more than a conference of professors, independent as all hell.  They certainly weren't cutting corners, were they, when the colonies sent you five out."

Heero thought back to some of his training, and the exams, and the training.  "No."  Anything for the colonies.  That was why he didn't want to live on L1 again. L1 had demanded the perfect soldier, and they'd gotten exactly what they wanted. Going there was like seeing the parts that made him himself on display, to be turned over and picked through like old rubble.  He wanted the perfect soldier to be built over with something entirely different.  Then maybe he'd stop thinking of Wing.

Looking at the second target sheet, the instructor thumped Duo enthusiastically on the back, then jerked his head in the direction of Durstang and Heero, and walked towards the doors leading off the range.

 "Off on the right shoulder," Duo announced as he and the instructor neared.

"Hn."  

"Off? That was pretty damn accurate in my book.  Damn, Chas, your director's pulling together some crew," the instructor said to Durstang.

"Just leave the well-being of the Sphere in our hands," Durstang agreed amiably.  "You'll do the forms, Mikeal?"

"Yeah, yeah, leave the paperwork to the overworked city employee, you bastard," the instructor said without rancor.  To Heero and Duo, he added, "Nice to meet you both.  Stop back by anytime--maybe we could get a little competition going, some friendly betting."

There was something suspicious in Duo's grin, to Heero's eyes at least, when he said, "I'd enjoy that."

Heero frowned, suspecting that he would.


	4. Expanded Notation

The fourth installment in Merellia and my series, which took a little bit of an unexpected twist.  We don't own GW blah blah blah.  Post EW, sort of AU, Newtype-ness, 2x1.  Rated R for language and semi-graphic sex.

**4.  Expanded Notation **

"Where to next?"

Durstang smiled, crossing his arms as he waited.  "Something you will both like, I think: the mobile suit simulators."  

Heero blinked, mildly surprised.  "How could Une afford those?"  He followed Duo into the elevator, Durstang behind them.

Punching the button for a floor, Durstang said, "What with the disbanding of the OZ and Alliance armies, these came up for release and the director was able to trade in a few favors and do some financial tap-dancing to ensure we got them, on the grounds that we're very likely to run into mobile suits and won't always have access to pilots like yourselves."

"Were they made by MilaTech?" Heero asked

Duo's gaze turned away from his study of the different floor buttons and he asked, "So, have the simulators turned you into a pilot, Chas?"  

The elevator doors opened after only a few seconds of ascent.  "I don't think so," Durstang told Heero, then grinned at Duo.  "Nothing like.  Coordinating all the input feeds is a stretch for me.  Lucrezia comes down here sometimes, though, if she's feeling pissy and wants to shoot something.  She says they're a pretty fair substitute for the real thing."

The MilaTech logo caught Heero's eye as soon as Durstang led them into the programming room with its bank of feedback screens.  Even the keyboard designs were identical: it was the same model simulator J had purchased and modified with Wing's specs to use for Heero's training.  

"Look at that, I was wrong about the manufacturer," Durstang said, typing a command onto one of the dormant screens, which slowly glowed to life.  "The director herself and Lucrezia have done quite a bit of work on this for us, updating it with the specifications for the late model Tauruses and Leos produced after this was made."  More screens brightened, lights flickering across the board as hardware readiness was signaled.  "They even entered some stuff on the Gundams, though they stopped once you guys passed word along that you'd destroyed them."

Heero grimaced and stood back as Duo slid into the central seat.  "Can I take a look?"  At Durstang's nod, Duo worked his way through the menu system, calling up and reading over what Heero guessed was probably the incomplete information on the Gundams.  "Hah!" Duo said.  "What were you guys on when you thought that?  Hmm."  He backed out a couple levels.  "Anyone mind if I correct some stuff?  You guys were a damn sight off on the speed estimates--you've got everything moving at 03's level, and 03 was like a snail compared to some of the others."

"I guess not," Durstang said, bemused. While Duo busied himself entering data on the Gundams, Durstang said to Heero, "There are a lot of different practice scenarios we've developed for these—mostly that Lucrezia's developed.  I've only been through a couple of the easiest, but apparently she's created some that are real killers.  Zechs was complaining about one of those last week."

"Will she be back tomorrow?" Heero asked.

"Who, Lucrezia? Most likely. It was only a quick assignment, to take a look into a rumor we'd picked up about some arms dealing in New Delhi.  I was supposed to go with her, but after the director spoke with you two, she sent Stepan in my place."

Duo's fingers moved rapidly over the keys, lines of information scrolling up and off the screen rapidly.  Heero crossed his arms.  "Stepan's another agent?"

Durstang moved into the empty seat on Duo's right, saying as he did so, "Yes, and he's an odd one. I suppose most of us are, one way or another--though Sally and Lucrezia are two of the straightest arrows I've ever met--but Stepan started out working for the Alliance Committee on Technologically Underdeveloped Inner Cities as an economist, of all things.   You've heard of C-twitch? Those guys."  When Heero just nodded at the nickname for the group, Durstang continued.  

"So, he was with us first as an analyst, but the director made him an agent a few months ago.  She says he's got the political gloss and glib tongue that are good to work with bureaucrats.  She says most of us lack that entirely.  I think she's got Zechs figured as the same type; she's been pairing him with Stepan more than anyone else."

"When you work with a partner, it's mostly like to like?"

Durstang shook his head. "Not really; when we're sent out in pairs, it's most often with a partner of complimentary, but dissimilar, skills.  The like to like mostly comes when the director brings in new agents.  I guess because it gives us more in common with each other, and because working with someone of similar skills makes it easier to assess what a new agent's particularly good at."  Pushing one foot against the floor, he swiveled the chair from side to side.  "That's how you get Zechs with Stepan and Duo with me; the director's got you figured for a soldier, which is why you're with Lucrezia."

"Ah."

"Done!" Duo declared, spinning his seat around and catching it up sharply to face Heero, his expression alive with good humor.  "Want to give it a shot, Heero?"

"No," Heero said.  When he saw Duo about to protest, he added, "You go."

"Yes, why don't you try the simulator, Duo?" Durstang smiled and said, "Lucrezia will probably want to see how Heero performs in it herself, and since she's not here. . . . You go ahead."

Duo shrugged and said cheerfully, turning back to the screens, "You don't have to twist my arm.  Let's see. . . . Ah, here's the scenario Noin's been using," he said, narrating his movement through the menus with the volubility that seemed so useless to Heero; the functionality of a running commentary on whatever Duo happened to be doing at the moment was never more than minimal.  "Damn, she's got some pretty good scores.  Hm.  Hasn't been doing so well since Zechs started in the simulator, though.  Must not really thrive on rivalry.  Well.  If I--"

"Just _go_, Duo," Heero snapped.  Durstang gave him a startled glance.

"Blow me, Yuy," Duo said lightly, not bothering to look away from the screens. "If I manage to beat him, maybe it'll goose her to improve some."  The screen flickered as he changed to a different menu level. "Using a Gundam would be too easy. . . . I'll give it a shot with a Leo. That ought to make it interesting."

After Duo had closed the simulator door behind himself, Durstang said cautiously, "Were you two friends during the war?"

Heero thought that over, replying as screens jumped to life with displays of the scenario and Duo's various vital readings, response times, and efficiency records.  _He shot me, I stole his Gundam parts, I saved him, we had sex. "Sometimes."_

"Ah," said Durstang, turning to watch the primary screen. "Just curious.  We all figured you had to have trained together or something, the way you all appeared at the same time and with the same type of mobile suits.  But I guess training doesn't always equate to friendship, does it?  Sometimes that comes along more slowly."

Heero didn't bother to correct any of Durstang's misconceptions; if they came up again, Duo was more than capable of deciding what to inform the agent he would be partnering.  He focused on the primary screen instead.  As the scenario started to play out, Heero realized Noin must have developed it in response to potential situations the Preventers might face: it began with the premise that a rebel political group had taken over an ex-Alliance supply depot with mobile suits still intact, the goal being to disable the mobile suits with as little endangerment of the surrounding civilian developments which had encroached upon the depot's abandoned territory.  The rebel political faction not having such moral impedimenta, Duo's small Leo was quickly surrounded by the more reckless fighters.

"He's not killing anyone," Durstang observed in surprise.  "It's really true what Zechs said, then, that you wouldn't have taken so long in fighting off Mariemaia's army if you hadn't been avoiding any deaths."

_I was planning to kill someone_, Heero thought, but only said, "Yes."  On the screen, Duo began to attack, cutting determinedly into the rebel groupings and leaving behind the disabled remains of mobile suits and fleeing pilots for the rebels to deal with.  The pilot module thrummed with the bass rumble used to simulate the vibrations of a moving mobile suit as Duo executed a particularly vicious assault that fouled one of the rebel Leos with two others, bringing all three to a standstill of tangled metal and hissing hydraulics lines.

It was interesting to see Duo fighting in something other than his Gundam, where he lacked the reach and effectiveness of the beam scythe.  In the Leo, he was quicker, pushing the machinery to the limit as he tried to capitalize on its smaller mass and the speed of his own reflexes.  Heero wasn't really surprised by what he saw in the constant stream of stats that flew across the monitor.  Duo was fast—but he would have had to be, to keep up with Deathscythe.

When Durstang didn't say anything in the minutes which followed, Heero fixed his gaze on the screen and asked in a monotone, "Is that why you left White Fang?"

"I'm sorry?" Durstang asked, shifting in his chair when he looked away from the display.

Heero felt like scowling.  Try to find out some information on Duo's behalf and Duo himself distracts the process.  "You left White Fang.  Because you disagreed with killing anymore?"

"Oh," Durstang said, looking back at the screen.  "I never left White Fang, exactly.  The organization . . .  disbanded . . .before I came to that decision.  I decided to join the Preventers, if that's what you're asking about, afterwards.  I had seen the director when she was liaising with the colonies and, well--her views are very persuasive."

On the screen, the fighting stopped as the remaining rebels signaled their surrender.  Screens blinked and flashed up new data summarizing the pilot's overall performance in the scenario.  "You worked for them as a hacker?" Heero asked.

"Mm. Yes.  Specialized in tracking arms shipments around the colonies, and in infiltrating law enforcement systems to tag and erase possible references to our activities.  That's been helpful, working for the Preventers. It's given me familiarity with a lot of potential hot spots of activity in the colonies, since I ran into other files than those specific to White Fang."

Heero shot a look at the pilot module of the simulator, impatient for Duo to come out and take on his share of the conversational burden.  "Your wife, was she also--"

Durstang stood.  "In White Fang?  No," he said, his brown eyes wrinkling at the corners when he smiled. "She's a primary school teacher."  He began turning off the simulator.  "As soon as Duo gets out here, we can call it a day.  I'm sure it's felt like a long one for you both."

"Man, it sure has," Duo said, apparently catching the end of Durstang's words as he left the module.  "So, we set out here?  How'd I do--oh, you guys turned it off," he observed, turning to look at the blank screens. 

Heero turned toward Duo, relieved that he'd be able to hand the social niceties over to his more sociable housemate. "Sorry for keepin' you waiting," Duo continued, not giving them a chance to respond.  He looked--Heero blinked as Duo brushed past him, babbling at a tempo Heero recognized from when Duo wanted to control a conversation.  "I was thinking about how things had gone.  Thought it went okay. That was a pretty neat scenario--"

Staring hard at Duo's back, Heero followed him and Durstang out of the room and back to the elevator.  Duo kept talking, his voice rising and falling with grating energy.  It sounded off, like an engine in need of calibration.  He tried to catch Duo's eye a few times, but the other pilot managed to evade each attempt until they were saying their farewells to the older agent on the ground floor.  

"Psych eval at nine tomorrow morning, gotcha.  Have a good evening, man, and thanks for everything today," Duo said before heading out the door.  The gate guard was a different man than the one this morning and didn't give either of them a second look as Duo breezed past him. Heero lengthened his stride to keep pace.

"Duo."  When he didn't stop, Heero caught hold of his arm.  "_Duo_."  

Duo gave him a look from too-wide eyes in too pale a face and said, "Gimme a minute, alright?"  Without waiting for a reply, he tugged his arm out of Heero's grasp and ducked into the store at their backs, some sort of restaurant.

By the time Heero evaded the puzzled seating host, Duo had disappeared into the bathroom.  Stepping swiftly past confused diners and a waiter carrying a tray of something smelling like hot cabbage, Heero put one hand on the bathroom door and twisted the knob, halfway expecting it to be locked. The door, however, opened easily into the white-tiled room; Heero shut it firmly behind him and engaged the lock.  Duo refused to look up from where he was splashing water onto his face at the sink.  "Duo."

When Duo didn't reply, Heero tried again, moving to stand next to him.  "What happened in the simulator?"

Duo twisted the cold water knob shut.  "Nothing _happened_."

"Nothing doesn't leave you looking like you're about to vomit. What's the matter?"

His hands braced on either side of the counter, Duo kept his head bent, not moving even when his braid slithered over one shoulder and into the sink.  Frustrated, Heero tried another tack. "Our bargain. You remember?"

Duo smiled, but it was a thin, brittle expression, like reentry stressed heat shielding. "Shit. That's low, Yuy.  It ain't nothing."

The scent of sanitizer was strong in the air.  Heero ignored it, pointing out, "If it _isn't _nothing, then it's something."

"Fuck!"  Duo stalked over to the wall and turned around, sliding down to a seat on the floor.  He fixed his gaze on a patch of tiles and said tonelessly, "I got scared."

Sitting beside him, Heero stretched his legs out straight.  That couldn't be the entirety of the problem. Duo admitted too easily to what he felt on any occasion for an emotional response to have thrown him so off-balance so quickly.  "Why?"

The drip of water down the drain echoed in the room, the silence a palpable thing that dampened even the murmurs of the restaurant beyond the door.   Duo broke it at last, his tone bitter. "The simulator was nothin' like being in Deathscythe. D'you know that? Was that why you didn't do it?"  Without waiting for a reply, he continued in rising anger, "It was nothing like. It didn't feel the same. _I _didn't feel the same. It was like being in some fucking metal box, jerkin' it around on puppet strings if I pressed the right button. And then I think, what if that's as good as it gets?  What if I was at my best when I was killing people?  I'm seven-fucking-teen, for Chrissakes!"  

Heero studied the toes of his shoes, and wondered if Duo could hear his accent wavering in and out of the speech patterns found in L2's more impoverished colonies.  One boot had a scuff across the leather.  Considering Duo's question, he began to itemize a list of things he had enjoyed since the end of the war.  He said meditatively, "Sex is pretty good."

Startled into laughter, it took a moment before Duo replied.  When he did, a thread of raw amusement was in his voice.  "You're right.  There's somethin' else I'm good at."  He paused for a moment.  "I didn't mean to be an asshole back there."

Duo slid his legs out like Heero had done; they stretched half a tile further than Heero's, who said, "You weren't an asshole."

"I am. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have dumped some damn personal freak in your lap after a first day on a new job.  Especially after the shitty night's sleep you got."

Heero shrugged. "In any case, you can't know it won't get any better until you're dead."

"God. I thought I was supposed to be the morbid one of us," Duo said, getting to his feet and holding out a hand to Heero.  They ignored the suspicious look cast at them by the host as they left the restaurant.

A block away from the subway entrance, Duo broke the silence that had grown between them.  Heero could almost hear the sound of Duo realigning his demeanor before he said, "Since you brought up the bargain back there, it's my turn for a question."  He paused as Heero preceded him through the turnstile, but, catching up on the stairs down to the train platform, asked, "What date did you put down for your birthday on that form of Martje's?"

Heero shook his hair back from his eyes and checked the arrival clock.  Three and a half minutes before the next train arrived in the station. "April fifth."

Duo's lopsided smile did nothing about the pale cast to his skin, but it reassured Heero that at least he was feeling more like himself.  "That's the date I chose, too," Duo said, slipping his hands into his jacket pockets.  "Next year, then, if we're still living together, want to have a party? Just for us and the other guys. Sorta a birthday thing.  With beer and stuff."

"Beer?" Heero questioned, looking at Duo.  He was toeing the yellow line that marked the safe edge of the platform and looking down the tunnel from which the train would come.  

Duo shrugged, glancing back at Heero.  "We'll definitely be legal by then.  I'm pretty sure we're expected to get trashed."

Heero felt the vibrations of the approaching train through the floor; a moment later, he could hear the roar it made through the tunnels.  "Here it comes," he said, then asked curiously, "Have you ever had any?"

After looking around surreptitiously, Duo stepped completely past the line.  "Beer?"  He raised his voice as the noise increased when the train rounded the corner into the station.  "Nah.  Had some whiskey once with Howard. It tasted like shit.  And I've had Communion wine.  I think it was really juice, though, since wine would've been too expensive.  But everybody drinks beer, so I figure it's got to be good. Have you ever had any?"  Duo's speech flowed easily once again, reassuring Heero even in its inconsequentiality.

The train roared past, the wind of its passage blowing Duo's bangs back from his face as he stood a couple inches away from the slowing cars.  Heero waited until it had completely stopped before he said, "No."

Duo turned to step through the nearest open door of the train, still looking peaked, but exhilarated behind that, presumably thanks to the adrenaline rush he'd just arranged for himself.  "Yeah, that's what I thought. It's kinda stupid, isn't it?  All we've done and we've never had a real drink.  Seems like our birthday might be a good time to try it."

"We could do that," Heero allowed slowly, his own thoughts traveling another direction.  "So was that a one time deal, or is it a fixed trade, straight across?  An answer for an answer?"

The other pilot glanced his way quickly, thoughts reflected in his eyes.  "Sure," Duo said after considering it.  Heero could see him weighing the offer as carefully as he would a new throwing knife.  "That sounds fair."

*~*~*

Duo took a shower when they got back to the apartment, hoping the hot water would blast away the residue of his experience with the simulator. The adrenaline had just left him feeling worse after it faded away.  He still couldn't explain what had happened—he'd stolen Leos during the war, and it had never felt like _that_.  It had never felt so…foreign.  It wasn't like Deathscythe, but that was expected; his Gundam had been tailored to him.  It fit perfectly.  Piloting other Mobile Suits had been sort of like walking in shoes that didn't fit right.

This hadn't been the same at all.

His eyes slid shut and he leaned into the spray, focusing on his vital signs until they were all back to normal.  He wasn't as good at it as Heero or Trowa, but he could still make his body obey him most of the time.  His mind was more difficult.  Try as he might, he couldn't stop himself from replaying the simulation over and over again in his mind.  The way the wrongness turned his stomach.  The way it seemed to itch under his skin.

He wanted to pretend the whole thing never happened, or just forget about it.  He needed something to take his mind off of it.

Turning off the water, Duo stepped out of the shower stall.

All and all, the day hadn't been that bad.  Sure, they'd been poked and jabbed and prodded, and questioned about things that Duo would have rather not been asked about.  There was that incident with the fake IDs getting in, which had been a little fun, but had probably bent Heero out of shape more than it was worth, and visiting Lady Une was never a treat, even when they were on the same side.  But really, it still wasn't that bad.  They'd gotten most of the paperwork done with, and the people they were going to work with didn't seem like complete incompetents.  He knew Wufei, Zechs, and Noin weren't, at least.

With any luck, they'd get through the training bullshit and on to something relatively exciting soon.  Preferably something where he'd get to blow stuff up.  Duo rather missed blowing stuff up.

Peacetime was surprisingly boring that way.  Or maybe not boring, but lacking… something.  Just lacking.  He toweled himself dry, pushing that thought away.  _Yes_, he told himself firmly,_ it wasn't really a bad day at all, if you ignore the end._

_Hell, we should probably be celebrating._

Duo stopped drying his hair momentarily.  Why not?  He and Heero were getting new jobs.  People celebrated that kind of thing, didn't they?  And it might help him relax.  At least, it couldn't hurt.  He'd need a little while to get ready if they were going to go out, but it wasn't even eight yet.  They could catch a late movie, hit a restaurant, or even a bar, since he was sure they could both prove that they were over eighteen if they had to.  Screw waiting for a birthday.

Nodding to himself, Duo finished drying off and threw on the clothes he'd brought in with him before marching into the living room.   Heero was sitting on the couch, frowning at a news report.  He looked up at his housemate's arrival, meeting Duo's eyes.

"I want to go out tonight," Duo announced, watching Heero for a reaction.

Heero blinked once rapidly, his only outward sign of surprise.  "What?"

"I said I want to go out tonight," Duo repeated, planting his hands on his hips.  "Let's go out and do somethin'."

"What for?" the other asked, turning off the news.

"Why not?" Duo retorted quickly.  "We don't get out much yet, and I don't feel like sittin' around tonight.  I want to do something. You're coming with me.  We'll," he paused, making an inclusive gesture with one hand, "celebrate getting into the Preventers and getting an apartment, livin' together."

The corner of Heero's mouth turned up just a little in what, for him, passed as a smile.  "And I'm going with you?"

"Yup." Duo agreed, then grinned.  "Come on.  You know you want to."

"So what are we doing?"  Heero relented.  He probably knew he wasn't going to win this argument; Duo had been almost positive of it.  Odds aside, he wasn't in the mood to give up, and Heero wasn't in the mood to fight.

"Don't know yet," he said, his grin growing broader.  He was recovered enough that he was certain the smile looked natural.  "Don't worry though, I'm sure I'll know when I see it."

 "Oh," Heero said, managing to suffuse that one syllable with more amusement than his stoic attitude could account for.

Without further encouragement, Duo pulled Heero onto his feet and down the short hall, where he pushed him into his bedroom.  "Wear something nice," he said, before closing the door after him.

*~*~*

This was not working.

In retrospect, he should have known that a movie was a very bad idea, and an action movie worse.  No matter how many explosions there were, the distraction wasn't good enough.  He quickly found himself snorting after a house on screen went up in flames after what was supposed to be a gas-main explosion.  "Hmph," he snorted under his breath, and leaned in close to whisper to Heero, "…only if they kept drums of diesel under the bed, eh?"

Heero grunted noncommittally.  "You picked the movie."

"Yeah, but you let me."

"You said you'd know what you wanted to do when you saw it."

"Yeah," Duo said softly, speaking directly into the other pilot's ear.  "But I didn't say I'd seen it yet."

The movie just wasn't distracting enough, even when he was complaining about the pyrotechnics.  It didn't keep him from thinking about the way something had been missing in the simulator, or the way something had been missing since then.  Shit, he was starting to suspect it hadn't been there before, either.

Whatever it was, he wanted to go back to ignoring it.

Duo sighed and started to turn back toward the movie, only to pause when he noticed the way the short hairs on the back of Heero's neck stood up when he'd breathed on them.  The other pilot had his attention fixed dutifully on the screen, but Duo could see his throat working to swallow even in the low theater lighting.  Smirking to himself, he leaned in again and purposefully blew a gentle stream of air against the skin under his housemate's ear, and watched him shiver.

"Know what?" he asked.

"No, what?" Heero returned, shooting him a look.

"I think I just saw it.  Want to get outta here?"

The other hesitated only a moment.

*~*~*

They made it back home in half the time it had taken them to get to the theater, and were barely inside the door before Duo pressed his partner against the wall and kissed him fiercely.  The feel of another mouth moving against his, lips and tongue and teeth all working at the sensitive nerve endings, saturated his perceptions.  The world narrowed, and some of the things he didn't want to remember abruptly didn't exist.

He slid his hands inside Heero's jacket, traveling up his chest and over his shoulders in one broad stroke, then tugged it down until it caught on his elbows.  Heero made a frustrated noise and pulled it the rest of the way off.  Duo was already moving on to Heero's belt.  Then Heero was pushing them away from the wall and toward his bedroom.

They found the wall two more times before making it to the bed, less two jackets, a belt, a shirt, two pairs of shoes and three socks.  Duo tugged his remaining sock off with his toes as he climbed on top of Heero.  He wasn't taking his time with the backs of his partner's knees or the inside of his elbows, or any of the other soft spots he normally paid attention to.  Instead he devoured his mouth, his ears, neck, nipples—all the places he knew would get him where he wanted to be the fastest.

It reminded him briefly of their first time, all adrenaline and distrust, still not sure what game the other had been playing.  The excitement had almost been better than the actual sex, which hadn't, in fact, been anything to write home about.  But that moment of penetration, that had been something.

The memory spurred Duo on, and he yanked Heero's slacks down ruthlessly, already searching the nightstand for the bottle he knew was in there somewhere.  He could feel the next few minutes crystallizing, as though he was at the apex of his trajectory; there was nothing to do but complete the arc.

Heero groaned in the back of his throat, his hands groping at Duo's shoulders as he struggled to get his shirt off without ripping it.  Duo shrugged out of the sleeves quickly, then shed his pants with the same haste.  This was it: move too fast to think about more than what was right in front of you.  He kissed Heero's mouth again.

He'd found the bottle he was looking for in the nightstand somewhere in there—he couldn't quite remember when, in the order of things.  He tried not to think too hard about what his fingers were doing as he pressed them inside, tried not to focus on the way the muscles relaxed under his touch; he was in a hurry, but he didn't want things to end that quickly.

Instead, he concentrated on the kiss, and on the way Heero's mouth still tasted a little like the vinegar salad dressing he had with dinner.

Then Heero was pushing him back on his knees, his hand slick as it wrapped around Duo's erection, as impatient as Duo's himself as he straddled the other's hips.  They fit together better now, but he was once again reminded of that first time.… Heero trusting him with his body, but not his Gundam.…

The former Wing pilot's face was a mask of concentration, brows drawn together, eyes looking inward as he adjusted to having something substantial inside him.  Duo took in the expression, saw when it eased into a different sort of frown.  Panting, Heero nodded to him, but Duo didn't need the signal.

They started to move together, hips twisting and pumping in time.  They knew each other, knew the pace as though it had been rehearsed.  Heero's arms went around Duo's neck at nearly the same moment the other's hand took him by the waist.

The world had constricted further, until there was nothing left beyond the edge of the bed, and very little that mattered beyond the familiar frown creasing Heero's brow and the pressure building at the base of his own spine, uncurling in his gut.  Duo bit his lip and buried his face in Heero's shoulder, willfully letting everything else fade away.  He felt his partner's deep-throated groan more than he heard it; felt himself already starting to tremor with the approach of his climax.

"Not yet," Heero rasped in his ear, then his nearly soundless groans evolved into a soft, low moan.  "Not quite… yet."

Duo nuzzled his partner's neck, trying his best to control his pace.  His fingertips tingled.  What little remained of the world was drawing tighter—there wouldn't be much more.  Heero freed one hand and began stroking himself.  One of Duo's hands joined his, fingers wrapping around his shaft, urging him faster.

Three more rapid thrusts and Duo lost it.  He let go of Heero's cock in favor of simply clutching him tightly.  Heero finished himself off, following only seconds later.

For a long, blissful moment, Duo was aware of almost nothing as he held his partner, both of them recovering.  Unfortunately soon, though, reality began to seep back in; and reality was slick, and sticky, and almost unbearably warm.  Duo placed a last clumsy kiss on Heero's chin before disentangling himself.  They both needed to clean up.

"Let's sleep in the other bed tonight," he suggested as he offered Heero a hand up.  "I don't feel like changing the sheets."

Heero nodded silently, his expression still a little dreamy, and Duo felt his own face break out in a post-orgasm smile as he watched Heero walk stiffly toward the bathroom.


	5. Oblique Relationships

Here's the latest in Saro's and my fic; standard disclaimers apply.  R for language and crass sexual jokes; 1x2x1; post-EW; newtypeness.

5. Oblique Relationships.

Duo put the glass of milk and plastic container of raspberries down on his computer desk.  The raspberries were still dripping water from having been run under the faucet, so a moment's shuffling through some of the papers he had stacked there--Heero had paid the first set of bills, so this month was Duo's first turn to pay them--turned up an unopened envelope.  Its grinning cartoon mascot identified it as junk mail, so he stuck it under the wet container as a makeshift coaster.  There.  

He'd picked a good time: evening in Bremen meant early morning on L2, and Hilde answered the call wearing her salvage jumper.  That meant she was already set for work, but had plenty of time before she needed to leave.  She fixed him with a glare the moment the video turned on.  "Duo, you asshole, you've been moved in for more'n a _week and you haven't called me.  Tell me Heero has been screwin' your brains out, 'cause otherwise I'm gonna be pissed."_

"Heero has been screwing my brains out the whole time," Duo said promptly, and ate a raspberry after giving Hilde a grin.  Hilde set herself up for torture all too easily sometimes.  It was harder to resist taking advantage of that with her than with Heero--Hilde could always be counted on for a good response.

She leaned closer to the screen excitedly. "Really?"

"Of course not," Duo said dryly, enjoying the slump of her shoulders.  "We have to go to work, y'know."  It was a relief talking to Hilde, not having to keep so close a watch on his accent.  Falling back into the familiar speech patterns, listening to Hilde, relaxed him.

Hilde brushed that necessity away with a flip of one hand.  "Yeah, but, _afterwards_.  Or before! You said you thought it'd be a change for the better."  She gave him a flat look.  "Not that I agree with you that a move away from my salvage yard is gonna be _better."_

"Hey, hey, Hilde-baby," he said, holding his hands up in mock-surrender.  "No flak for the yard from me.  You know I liked workin' there."  

Hilde sighed. "Yeah, when you weren't off starin' at the Earth.  Where's Heero?"  

"Buyin' groceries for dinner.  We didn't have the kind of cheese he wanted."  Duo held back the smile that wanted release at the memory to avoid encouraging a remark from Hilde.  Heero'd looked so serious when he shook his head at Duo's suggestion to use an equal amount of the processed cheese slices they already had, which was too bad because it would've been interesting to see how that would have turned out.   Cooking was rather cool that way, like a personal chemistry lab.  Mix Component A with Component B and hope it does what you think it should.

"Cheese, huh?  Very domestic," Hilde managed to twit him anyway before her demeanor sobered.  "I wasn't too surprised, y'know.  You Gundam pilots--I don't think any of you could be happy for long, workin' for some two-bit salvage affair."

Duo swallowed a raspberry and said firmly, "You've gotta better place than that, Hilde, and you know it."  He quickly moved to change the topic: that Hilde's comments could strike nearer the bone than that damn psych doctor he'd seen the other morning--it was one of the disadvantages to having friends.  "Speakin' of, how's it goin' with O'Rourke's account? You find any of those parts for him?"

She grimaced.  "Yes and no. We found the 167 timing converter, but between his placin' the order and our findin' it, guess what happened?"

"He gave up on the project?"

Hilde blinked at him, startled.  "Yeah, pretty much that's what he did.  He had a mechanic look at the Metahelion and whatever that guy told him made O'Rourke decide against the repairs.  Did he say something to tip you off he was thinkin' about that? You didn't say anything to me."

Duo shook his head.  "Nah.  He just didn't seem too committed when I first talked to him, was all."  Heh.  It had been the first time Duo'd attempted to track probabilities for more than a few minutes or so in advance; the headache he got when the possible futures exploded into the infinite was real persuasive against trying it again.  "You charged him for shippin' costs and all, right?"

Hilde's expression was grimly satisfied. "You bet.  It cost him, too, 'cause I'd had that thing sent in from one of the L3 colonies.  But Howard bought it off me--said he's got a buyer down on Earth somewhere--so it turned out alright."

"Cool," Duo said approvingly, rocking his chair back so he could cross his legs under the desk.  The secondhand chair squeaked with a protest of plastic at his shift in pressure.

Hilde eyed him, a gleam of speculation in her gaze.  "So, wanna come back and help me keep this place from turning into one of those two-bit salvage yards?"

Duo shook his head.  "You're doin' fine without me.  'Sides," he added with a quirk of his lips, "you'd be hard put to beat an offer of sex from Heero."  

"He's that good, huh?" Hilde said teasingly.  When Duo just flashed her another grin, she said, "So it's goin' well.  I'm glad.  What about your job, d'you like it so far?"

"Yeah, mostly.  They had us memorizing those new interplanetary laws for carrying personal firearms this week.  And some stuff about armament control.  Then reading some briefs that're being considered by the ESUN Dispute Resolution Committee."  Duo tried to keep out the sneer that wanted to creep into his voice every time he thought about the DRC. Those politicians whose papers he'd scanned had as much a chance of success as--as Trowa did getting out of Quatre's clutches.

"That sounds fascinating," Hilde cooed with patently false enthusiasm.  "You left me for that?  It can't be all you're doin' or you would've gone mad by now."

"Clean bill of mental health as of Tuesday from the company shrink," said Duo loftily.  "But yeah.  It's not what'll be typical, far as I can tell.  My partner and I, we're prepping t'go on an assignment next week.  Not too big a deal, they wanna make sure I'm up to snuff before letting me out on my own," he said, with a wry expression.  "But it's not make-work, either. Investigating some weapons stockpiling.  Maybe I'll get to blow something up," he said, playing up the wistfulness in the phrase for the pleasure of seeing Hilde laugh.

"If they won't let you have any fun, Agent Maxwell, come back for a visit and we'll set you to salvaging some of the old minefields, 'kay?"  Hilde brushed her hair out of her eyes and glanced past Duo's shoulder, taking in the apartment, he assumed.  "What'll Heero do while you're gone?"

He shrugged, picking up the stack of unsorted mail and flipping through it.  "He hasn't mentioned a mission to me yet, though I dunno.  He's pretty close-mouthed about work stuff, so he might have one.  Stay home if he doesn't, I guess.  He'd enjoy himself more if he'd go out and hook up, but he sorta likes stayin' at home."

Hilde chortled.  "Take his left hand for a date, then, huh?"

A handful of circulars got tossed into the trash.  "Tcha," Duo noised derisively.  "He's right-handed."  

She snickered appreciatively, then asked, "So, if he's not much of a go-outer, what do you guys do for fun?"  At Duo's pointed look, she laughed again.  "Yeah, yeah, I got that part.  But what else?  What's Bremen like? Any sights to see, groundside attractions to take a look at?"

Duo shrugged, taking a swallow of the milk and eating a raspberry with it.  "I dunno that.  We haven't done much, really. Unpack, start work, go home, that sorta thing."  He began to slice open the envelopes of the keeper mail.

Hilde said dubiously, "You haven't done _anything_?"

"We went out to a movie on Monday," Duo conceded.  "It sucked, though.  We left early and went home to screw around," he said, smirking.  

Hilde propped her chin on her linked hands. "Lemme get this straight.  You've been livin' with the guy in the capital of Europe for two weeks, and that's all you've done? Work, home, sex?"

Nettled, Duo said, "We had dinner out before the movie."  Empty envelopes followed the circulars into the trash with a little more emphasis than strictly necessary.  Being grilled, even by a friend, pushed all the wrong buttons.  

With exaggerated patience, Hilde said, "So have you guys done anything besides work--and grocery shopping doesn't count--that hasn't ended in sex?"

"What is this, Hilde?  Nosy Bitch Day?"  Duo leaned away from the screen and crossed his arms, his mouth thinning.  He couldn't quite maintain the expression, though, and slid her a sly look. "Grocery shopping ended with sex, too, a couple of times."

Hilde laughed, her bangs slipping down in front of her eyes.  She pushed them back again.  "I'm nosy? Who was it warned me away from that dick Pat Benton?  Answer the question already."

Duo countered irritably, "So what if we screw a lot?  What's your problem with that, Hilde? Hell, it's half the reason I moved in with the guy."  And the other half he wouldn't mention to anyone, especially after Sally's interrogation on Monday.  The discussion of that particular mine was one he had no interest in triggering.  He sucked a raspberry seed from between his teeth.  Straightening, he said with a smile, "You oughta settle down with one of your men, do the good Catholic wife thing for a while.  You've got the role down already."

She frowned at him. "We can talk about me later.  Besides," she said lightly, "maybe I already have. Thought of that, huh?"

"_What?  Shit, you've got to be kiddin' me!"  Duo jerked in his seat, indignant.  Plastic creaked as the chair's back flexed. "One of your guys actually proposed? In the past week?"  He sat back, narrowing his eyes as he studied her face.  "You're lyin'."_

Hilde grinned.  "Got you.  Anyway, Jean might.  He appreciates a girl who knows what his favorite color is."

"I know that Heero can hack through a firewall in forty-five seconds and break a paracol-128 encryption key within sixty," retorted Duo.  "I think that counts for a little more than what his fucking favorite color is."

"Depends on whether you're talkin' about a coworker or a lover."   With a glint in her eye and a cloyingly sincere tone, Hilde said, "You guys need to _bond_, Duo."

This sounded like a comment straight from one of those women's magazines he'd looked at out of curiosity in the psych's office, full of touchy-feely shit.  "Fuck, it's not Nosy Bitch Day, it's Miz Therapist Day," Duo announced to the room at large, throwing up his hands.  "Parade at ten. Thanks, Hilde."

"Look," said Hilde patiently, pushing her bangs back again. "All I'm suggestin' is that you do stuff together. Get to know him outside sex and work.  Play board games, for God's sake."

"Board games?" Duo said disbelievingly.

Hilde made a face at him. "A videogame, then.  Whatever it is guys do."

We have nightmares together, Duo thought sourly, this morning's early awakening coming to mind.  "Yeah, Hilde, whatever."  War was supposed to be the most bonding experience there out there, wasn't it?  They'd gone through it together, sometimes the only allies each other had.  He didn't see how shooting some badly animated Aries suits would make them any closer. It'd be worse than the fucking simulator.  He fingered the raspberries and ate another.

"That's rude, Duo," Hilde snapped.  "I'm just sayin' that you seemed more taken with the guy than I've seen you with anyone else.  If you want it to be a flash in the pan, then fine, go right ahead and keep right on doin' nothing with him but screw."

"Hilde, look at how old we are," Duo said, going for patience in the face of her rebuke and crossing his arms.  He ignored the queasiness that had uncoiled in his gut at the thought of Monday afternoon.  "Guys our age are _supposed to screw a lot."_

"Guys your age don't have half the experience you do, and they aren't livin' together and holdin' down permanent jobs."

Uneasily, Duo shifted in his seat.  "You make it sound like we're married or something."

Grinning, Hilde said, "If the shoe fits--"

"A gnat couldn't wear that shoe.  That shoe's on the far side of Jupiter and heading away at light speed."  Damn it, what was this?  Show some interest in a guy--alright, he'd never moved in with another guy before, but it wasn't like Heero would get a typical response any more than Heero was a typical guy--and Hilde already had them walking down the aisle of her mind.  "I think," he said before Hilde could open her mouth to let loose with some other whacked-out proposal, "that it's time to talk about _your sex life.  You usin' protection and all? Not gonna end up with any 'war orphans' of your own?"_

He relished the discomfited look on Hilde's face.  "Of course," she said tartly. 

"Good girl," he said with caressing condescension, watching her eyes narrow in irritation at his tone.  It was almost like springing a trap on OZ.  Timing, speed, surprise, preparation--they all worked together, were all working together now as he smiled to himself and unleashed the really good question on her.  "Have you gone down on Jean yet?"

Her expression of appalled shock was all he could have wished for.  "Duo!"

He watched with satisfaction as Hilde turned red.  Just as he'd thought; she was willing to talk about this if it applied to him, but she wasn't willing to have the tables turned.  He crossed his legs again, tapping one foot idly.  "What about the other, what was his name?  Paul?  Or was that the previous guy? I could give you some pointers. Want some pointers, Hilde?"

"No!"  She all but squirmed in her chair.

Duo grinned at her, leisurely propping his elbows on the back of his seat.  "There's a spot right behind the balls--"

Even Hilde's neck was flushed.  "You asshole!  I don't want to hear--"

"I bet your saint would like that.  And even more if you'd swirl your tongue right around--"

"Damn it, Duo!"  Hilde punched the disconnect button in retreat, but not before Duo had dropped the pretense to laugh at her.  God, it was good being able to set her off like that!  

A thump and a rattle at the front door brought Duo out of his bedroom to see Heero shoving the door aside, arms laden with plastic grocery sacks.  He was still chuckling as he crossed to his roommate and shut the door for him, flipping the deadbolt locked.  "Got the cheese, babe?" he asked.

"Two shops," Heero muttered in displeased reply as he headed towards the kitchen.  "Why are you laughing?"

"No real reason. Just a call with Hilde."  The last time he'd played with anyone else his age, he'd still been learning not to color outside the lines.  Wait, no, he'd played chess with Wufei and Trowa on Peacemillion.  But Heero'd never agreed to a game, so how was he supposed to know what kind of things Heero would like to do?  "So, whatcha get besides the cheese?"

*~*~*

Quatre leaned forward eagerly as the screen lit with video feed and Duo smiled at him.  "Hey, man! It's been a while.  --It's Quatre," Duo said, flicking a glance towards someone offscreen, Heero presumably.  Despite the grainy image from an inexpensive vid camera, the Deathscythe pilot looked well.  

"Only you would say a month and a half has been that long," Quatre said, smiling, and holding back the grin that wanted to burst free only with great effort.  _You head WEI now; you can take the time to be pleasant before hijacking the conversation to your own purposes!_  Forcing himself to be patient, he focused on the image before him.  The video quality couldn't disguise the decade-old style of the cabinetry in the kitchen visible behind Duo, even covered by fresh paint.  An open cabinet above the sink showed boxes of foodstuffs, the vid resolution too poor to permit reading them.  They were arranged in soldierly rows by height.  Had Duo been responsible for that, or Heero? Or maybe they had a maid service?

A mumble sounded from elsewhere in the kitchen; Duo looked back to the screen and grinned.  "Heero says hi, too.   And it has--been a while, I mean.  You heading this way anytime soon?"

"I've got a con--_Duo."  Quatre came to an abrupt stop, his excitement growing cold and the words tangling in his throat as he stared at the grainy image.  "What did you do to your __hair?"  It was all gone, shortened into some style that barely brushed his ears.  Quatre knew the astonishment in his eyes had to be giving him away, but he couldn't stop staring at the other pilot in horrified fascination.  _

"My hai--oh!"  Duo's mouth twitched before he broke into a laugh. "God, you should see your face, Quatre.  I haven't done anything, see?"  He reached up behind his head and pulled out something; the familiar braid tumbled over his shoulder and Duo's mouth tipped up at one corner at Quatre's reaction.  "Just keeping it out of the way of the stove."  He displayed a long-shafted wooden spoon in explanation of his words, apparently the item that had been used to skewer the braid out of the way.

Quatre drew in a rough breath, feeling his heart rate slow down again even as he fought back the embarrassed expression that wanted to paint itself on his face.  To have been misled by substandard video equipment, even.  He could only hope that Duo didn't think it a joke worthy of passing along to others.  "That's--that's a good idea," he said, struggling for nonchalance.

"You bet," Duo said.  "I learned that lesson last year when I lost a chunk of it 'cause I didn't realize it had fallen on one of the burners.  Man, the stench!  So I shove it down my shirt now."

"You used my chopsticks last night," Heero grumbled, still off-screen.  

"Hey, I promised I'd leave them alone in the future," Duo protested, turning away from the screen to plead his case with Heero.  He turned back to Quatre when that only got a grunt from the other pilot, saying in an undertone, "He acted like I'd been eating off a plate I fed rats from."

"_I am the one who would have to eat with them," Heero corrected in a pointedly stiff tone.  Quatre had heard him talking like that aboard Peacemillion, on the rare occasions Heero deemed some action taken by their opponents imprudent enough to warrant comment.  _

Duo's face turned sly before he vanished off the screen.  "Then I'll," Quatre could hear him saying, accompanied by the clink of metal against glass, "just have," and the sound of scuffling feet on a waxed floor, "to eat _you_."  A thump that Quatre could clearly envision as an elbow to a gut cut off whatever Duo had been about to say with a pained grunt.  Quatre held back on a laugh; he admired Heero for cutting straight to the point.  It was a tactic which often seemed to have the best results with Duo.

The double meaning of Duo's words caused Quatre to pause as Duo stumbled back in front of the screen, wheezing with breathless chuckles around a mouthful of something. _I didn't think they were together like that__. "Heero's . . . making a . . . pasta casserole," he offered in explanation as he caught his breath, one hand pushed gingerly to his stomach. _

 "My nanny used to say that to me," Quatre offered with a slight smile, considering the possibility.  _Maybe . . . ?  _ "Then she'd pull up my shirt and blow a raspberry on my stomach."

Swallowing the last of his mouthful, Duo nearly choked on a laugh.  "She said she'd _eat _you?"  He gave a speculative glance away from the screen. "Maybe I should try that on Heero, that blowing thing. . . ."  The grinding sound of shattering glass answered that suggestion.  "Shit!  Oh, Heero, man, shit! You okay?" 

"Heero?" Quatre asked worriedly, setting aside his reanalysis of Heero's interactions with Relena.  

Heero moved towards the sink, opening the cabinet beneath that to drop the shards of something into it.  Quatre could hear the heavy clinks of thick glass shards landing on each other.  "I'm fine," he said shortly, sticking his hand under the faucet.  "It was just a cup of tomato juice."  He spared a glance at Duo, peering over his shoulder. "You will _not _try that."

"Didn't even cut yourself," Duo said, bemused, before his smile snapped back into place with every ounce of the insouciance Quatre had seen him display during the war.  "Guess I can't offer to kiss and make it better, then."

Quatre watched Heero closely; the other pilot didn't even blink at Duo's reply, as if he were used and resigned to hearing outré statements like that. Quatre wished he could read emotions over vid units; then he would know for certain. _It's just Duo joking.   _"Quatre," Heero greeted, moving back towards the counter where he'd been preparing the dishes.  He stopped ignoring Duo long enough to ask, "Is there another measuring cup?"  _They would have told me if it were more than that._

"I didn't have any more glass ones," Duo said, leaving Heero to rummage through a drawer as he turned back to Quatre.  "So, why the call? Not just making sure we haven't killed each other yet?  Heero has come close to it a time or two," he said with a deadpan expression, "but he restrains himself when I point out that he's the one who gets up at two in the morning to clean his guns."

Quatre's earlier excitement returned full-force with an euphoric rush.  He smiled, this time knowing knowing he looked smugger than Wufei when a woman's misstep had proven his misogynistic views correct.  "Trowa proposed," he announced, allowing himself to gloat openly.

Duo's eyes flew wide in astonishment.  "_Trowa?"  _

"Of course Trowa," Quatre said indignantly before Duo's grin caught up with him.  

"Congratulations, man!"   Heero appeared next to Duo's shoulders to agree to that with a nod.

"Why'd you say it like that?  _Trowa," Quatre asked, trying to mimic Duo's tone around the smile that continued to interrupt him._

Duo just laughed, crossing his arms.  "'Cause I figured you'd be the one to ask him.  So when'd this happen?"

"This morning."  Quatre's smile grew wider at the memory.  "He had to leave last night—the circus starts its spring touring next week—so he put the ring around my toothbrush where I'd find it first thing."

Even Heero looked amused at that, huffing a breath that was almost an outright chuckle.  Duo's face scrunched up, as if he were trying to hold back another laugh.  Quatre eyed him, trying to appear ready to be offended. "Well?"

"That's just—so—so fucking _Trowa _for you," Duo said at last on a plosive breath, his eyes alight with the laughter he held back.  "I guess it's good he didn't punch you in the gut to pass it to you that way.  You said yes right away?"

Quatre folded his hands together solemnly despite his continued delight.  "I messaged him immediately."

"I bet you guys're gonna have a fun reunion," said Duo slyly, getting jostled a little as Heero nudged him. "Hey!"

"Not everybody appreciates your jokes, Duo."

"But you do, huh?"  Duo aimed a grin at Heero over his shoulder.

Heero moved back to the counter, out of the range of the camera.  "Not always."  

"You definitely have it good, Quatre," Duo said, turning back to face the vid unit. "Your roommate is _good _to you."

"Oh, he's very good," Quatre said with a wry chuckle and earning an appreciative guffaw from Duo.  "There are _several reasons why I'm marrying him."_

"Like?" Duo invited with a smirk.

"Like . . . "  Quatre mused, then smiled. Duo would expect a joke, but it wasn't something he wanted to joke about. "Like the way he can figure out the right counterpoint to play to my music, every time.  Like the way his happiness feels.  Like," he finished, seeing Duo shift his weight and then stop the movement before it could become a fidget--Duo must be uncomfortable with the mushiness-- "the way he didn't kick me out of bed the other night, when I woke up with a nightmare and kneed him in the groin."

Duo all but choked on a laugh at that.  "A definite keeper, I guess!  Congrats again, man.  That's really cool."

Quatre propped his chin up on one hand, grinning at the other pilot. "We'll be setting a date soon, I think. It will probably be next summer—so keep your schedule clear, alright?"

"_Next summer?" Duo said, astonished, then continued, "Will do.  More time to think of a really great gift for you guys, I guess."_

Quatre laughed. "Thank you," he said dryly.  "So, you'll excuse me, right?"  He said in explanation to Duo's look of expectation, trying not to let his smile become something foolish and infatuated, "Trowa's evening performance ends soon, and he—he might call."

"Sheesh, man! Don't let us keep you."  Suiting action to words, Duo disconnected the call before Quatre could even give him a proper farewell; the window faded to black with a final sight of a cheerful wave from the other pilot.  

Quatre stared at the blank window a moment in the silence of his office, thinking, then keyed in a hold on all incoming calls but Trowa's into his system.  That done, he rested his glance on a stack of documents, feeling the excitement of the announcement drain away in the face of a wait.  "I suppose—"  His computer beeped in announcement of an incoming message.  His hand flew to accept it. "Trowa!"

*~*~*

"Yuy," Heero said, answering the beeping vid unit without turning away from the pan he was scrubbing.  He seemed to be making very little progress.  Had he known how hard viscous cheese could become when properly heated, he would not have suggested casserole for dinner.

"Well that's a fine hello," a familiar voice remarked wryly.  "You could at least look at me when you say it."

"Hello, Relena," Heero said, shifting so he could see her face.  She was watching him with fixed interest, chin propped up on one fist and eyebrow cocked at an amused angle.

"Hi, Heero."  The eyebrow lifted a bit more.  "You know, I realize that vidphones are complex machines, but I think a big, tough Gundam pilot like yourself can brave it from time to time to call a friend, don't you?"  Her eyes flicked over the dishes he was scouring.  "Which one of you takes the credit for this culinary disaster?"

Heero snorted.  "Did you just call to tease me?"

"Ah," she said, smiling.  "That would be you then.  Do you have any idea how to get baked on cheese off a pan?"

"Duo suggested solvent."

Glancing up, he had the privilege of seeing Relena gape.  Finally, she managed, "He was joking, right?"

"He could have been," Heero told her with a shrug.  "Sometimes it can be hard to tell with him.  He might have been joking, unless it worked."

The girl sighed.  "How about if you let that soak for a while and talk to me, okay?  How is it going with Duo?"

"We're figuring things out," he said, after a pause.  There were a number of things about living with Duo he hadn't anticipated, but thus far, nothing he couldn't cope with.

"Figuring things out?" She repeated incredulously.  "Which is Heero-speak for…?"

"For: we're figuring things out."  Heero chuckled softly as he considered his reply.  "I'm getting used to sleeping without a pillow."

Relena laughed, and he decided to take her advice and let the casserole dish soak.  Drying his hands on a dishtowel, he focused his whole attention on the phone.  She looked pleased with herself.  "So," she said, "living together is working out?"

"We've only been living together for two weeks," Heero told her.  "I think it's a little early to make conclusions like that."

"But you're getting to know each other better?" She pressed.

"Yes."  He was learning new things about his fellow pilot, and it was different than their brief stints as roommates in boarding schools.  Duo was… not entirely what he expected.  The more time he observed the other pilot's seemingly casual actions, the less casual many of them seemed to become.  The method behind them remained largely a mystery, however.

"And that's what you wanted, right?"

Nodding, he leaned against the counter top.  The incident with the telemarketer flashed through his mind, and the way Duo had seemed to anticipate the go ahead on the firing range.  Other things that hadn't caught his attention when they happened, but which, when viewed in light of the theory Heero was piecing together, took on new importance.  The way he'd sounded so confident when they were moving in and he said that the cereal and milk were going to spill, or the way he'd rushed to open the window seconds before the smoke alarm went off while making dinner weren't much on their own, but taken together, it was enough to make him wonder.

"So, is this a good thing?"

"Yes," Heero told her, taking his time with the answer.  "I think it is."

"I'm glad to hear that!" Relena said, and sounded it.

"You just like being right."

"Who doesn't?" she came back immediately, waving the sentiment away with a gesture that conveyed both carelessness and refinement. "I can be happy for you, and happy because I'm right at the same time.  The way I'm being run around these days between school and politics, I'm getting accustomed to multitasking."

"I'm sure," Heero said dryly.

"Where is your better half, anyway?" she continued, not noticing or willfully ignoring his tone.  "I wanted to say hi to him, too."

"I doubt either of us qualifies for that title," Heero commented, crossing his arms across his chest.  "And he's out picking up Chinese takeout."

"Very wise," Relena said with mock solemnity.  "I'm not sure whatever was in that pan was edible."

Choosing not to respond to that, Heero said instead, "He should be back soon, if you want to wait.  Or you could call back later."

"I don't mind waiting."  A knowing grin was growing on the young woman's face as she spoke.  "It gives me time to grill you for all the juicy details."

"Relena," the Wing Pilot chided, "it sounds like you're asking for information about my sex life."

Relena feigned innocence very well.  The guileless look she gave him was very believable.  "You know," she said, "I nearly think I am.  So are you going to tell me, or do we keep playing twenty questions?"

"I have no complaints about that aspect of our relationship," Heero said, a little smugly.

"No complaints?" Relena asked.  "I wanted gory accounts of seduction and conquest."

"He woke me up on Saturday with a blowjob." Perfect deadpan.  "Does that count?"

"Only for a guy," she told him, sighing melodramatically.  "Don't you have anything a little better than that?  I need romance and drama to live vicariously through."

"You need a boyfriend," Heero corrected.

"Details!  I need details!" She smacked her desk in emphasis.  "I need something to distract me from the Political Philosophy reading I've been doing for the past two hours.  If I don't get some sort of outside stimulation, I'll probably have dreams about John Stewart Mill."

The door opening interrupted what Heero was going to ask about her preference of dreaming about Duo and himself, and his housemate's voice announced, "Hey, babe.  I got the General Tsao's extra spicy.  I know you don't mind—" he appeared in the kitchen carrying a pair of white plastic bags with little red pagodas blazoned on them.

"Oh, hey kitten," he said with an exaggerated airiness as his eyes landed on the vidscreen.  Heero knew it was tone he reserved specifically for the young pacifist leader.  Idly, Heero wondered if Duo had a tone like that for him.  Relena waved hello.  "How's things?"

"Better than when I had to read Neitzsche in Ethics," she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste.  "That man made me want to beat my head against the table.  I think Romefeller must have cut their teeth on _The Antichrist_."

Duo tutted sympathetically as he unloaded the food.  Heero watched the exchange with interest.  If Duo didn't know who Neitzsche was, he showed no sign of it, breezing through his response with characteristic ease.  "I'd have thought they would've let you through those classes on a gimme.   Maybe you should visit us sometime.  We'll help you relax."

_A what?_  Heero started as his housemate arranged the cardboard takeout boxes on the countertop—parallel to the edge of the counter, but staggered regularly against each other.

"You two could visit _me_ sometime."  She countered, ushering the conversation away from her studies.  "I already told this guy," she indicated the young man who had answered the vid with a jerk of her thumb, "that the phone wouldn't bite him.  I should yell at you for not calling, too.  You know how much I love you two."

"Yeah, I love me too," Duo said, handing Heero a pair of disposable bamboo chopsticks.  "Here you go, so you don't have to use the hairy ones."

Heero accepted the chopsticks without comment, while Relena gave both of them a suspicious look.  "The hairy ones?  Dare I ask?"

"Nope.  Too kinky for you," Duo replied, his grin twisting up into something lopsided and lecherous.

"It wasn't kinky," Heero explained, rolling his eyes.  "He used them in his hair, to hold it up."

"Just spoil the whole mystique, why don't you," the long haired youth said with mocking regret.  "Guess I'll just have to come up with a kinky use for them later."

Relena laughed, a happy, expressive sound that drew Heero's gaze straight to the vidscreen.  He had the distinct impression that she was laughing at him, even though Duo was the one who'd made the joke.  The impression was only heightened by the way her eyes twinkled as she glanced between them.  "This is why you have to call me more often.  I need to laugh like this more."  The last chuckles died down as she spoke.  "Unfortunately, Mister Mill is calling.  I have to finish _On Liberty_ by next class and I'm supposed to read the other Heero Yuy's treatise on colonial rights before next week, so I should probably get on that."

"Alright," Duo told her, grinning as he helped himself to the first serving of chop suey.  "We'll talk at y'later."

Heero nodded a goodbye just as the screen blacked out, then turned to dinner, and his housemate who had already moved on from the chop suey and was dishing out the General Tsao's chicken.  Picking up his own plate, he asked quizzically, "What's a 'gimme?'"

"What?"  Duo looked up, his expression momentarily clouded.

"You said you though Relena should get advanced through her Ethics class on a 'gimme,'" Heero prompted, watching as the other's face abruptly changed with understanding.

"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?  It's just something obvious.  You know, like the fact Relena already knows about ethics is a gimme…" He trailed off.  "I don't know where the saying comes from.  'Give me a break,' I suppose."

"I've never heard you say that before," Heero told him as he got a serving spoon for the rice.  "Is it an L2 thing?"

Duo shrugged indifferently.  "Mostly.  So, how's Relena doin' besides the class load stuff?"

"Fine."  He let a smirk touch his lips as he continued.  "She was curious about our sex life."

Instead of the answering smile and jibe Heero expected, the former Deathscythe pilot said, "I imagine with Quatre and Trowa's little announcement, she'll have other things on her mind for a while."

"You didn't seem surprised by the announcement so much as the instigator," Heero said, remembering the earlier conversation, and making a mental note to buy a new pyrex measuring cup.

"Nah," Duo told him around a mouthful of noodles.  "It seemed pretty likely something like this would happen soon.  I just figured Quatre's timer would wind down quicker than Trowa's.  You can be sure I'd kick you out of bed though, if _you _kicked _me_ in the nuts during one of your nighttime rampages.  I draw the line at waking up to shouting in three different languages."

Heero's cheeks heated slightly at the memory, but he managed to keep his expression neutral. "I'm not the only one with trouble sleeping.  You are just as bad.  And apparently, Quatre is too."

"Not so surprising, I guess," the other said stopping to think about it.  "We've all seen enough to give a person an excuse to have nightmares."

Agreeing silently, Heero ate his meal.


	6. Subjective Equations

Another chapter for us.  Woohoo!  Anyway, standard disclaimers apply.  Post-EW, newtypeness, and 1x2x1.  Rated R for language.

6. Subjective Equations

The subway car swayed lightly around them, smelling of old newspapers and tired plastic as Duo and Heero clung to the straps.  The crowd of rush hour workers crowded into the available space; Duo was close enough to Heero to smell the warm musk of his aftershave and study the way the hair at the nape of his neck refused to lie neatly flat.  Even the close-cut bits bristled with as much vigor as the tips of his eyebrows.  _You know you've it got bad for the guy, _Duo thought in amusement at himself, _when you start thinking eyebrows like his are attractive._

His arm ached from holding to a strap meant for a much taller person, so under cover of another sway as the train rounded a curve, red lights flashing by in the darkness outside the windows, Duo let go of it to slip an arm around Heero's waist, resting his chin on Heero's bony shoulder.  Heero stiffened, but when he didn't immediately shove Duo away, Duo added it to the list of ways the day already bid fair to be a good one.  "Penny for your thoughts," he murmured in Heero's ear.

Not unsurprisingly, Heero responded with his usual penchant for directness and literality.  "You don't have a penny."

Duo humored himself by slipping deft fingers into the pocket of the man standing next to him and pulling out a fiver by feel alone.  "Nah, but I've got five creds for you," he said, and held the chip forward for Heero's inspection.

Oblivious to its source, Heero just grunted and, as Duo had expected, didn't take it.  Duo slipped it back into the man's pocket after a quick focus on the likelihood that he'd get caught, Heero saying in the meanwhile, "I was just thinking about work."

Duo arched his eyebrows; getting Heero to talk about work this week had almost been as hard as breaking onto G's ship the first time. "What about work?" he asked, insinuating his free hand into Heero's pocket this time.  Heero's own left hand was there already; Duo cupped it in his.

"The educational equivalency exam from Tuesday."  The train began to slow as it neared the next station, only a lessening in the rush of air past it to indicate the deceleration.  

"Oh yeah?"  Get your scores yesterday, too?"  Pressed against him in mimicry of their fellow tightly-packed commuters, Duo could feel the way Heero's diaphragm contracted with the minute percussion of his grunt.  "What kind of scores did you get?"

Coming to a stop at the station, bright florescent lights flooding the windows, the door of the train hissed open to allow the passengers to exit.  Duo restrained a sigh as Heero moved away to claim a vacated seat.  Duo grabbed the one next to him, dropping into it just in time to earn a glare and a muttered comment from another businessman, sweaty in a winter wool suit.  He gave the guy a wide smile before directing his attention back to Heero.  "So?" he prompted.

"College postgraduate equivalency in physics and a step below that for math," Heero said begrudgingly.

Duo turned a grin on him.  "That's great, man.  So J ran you through astrophysics training sort of like I got, I guess."

Heero shifted his knees away from the corner of a brief case, striving, Duo suspected, to look unconcerned.  "You?"

With a smile, Duo propped a foot on his knee, giving the impression of studying the black pants leg of his Preventers uniform trousers.  He approved of the choice of color.  "Postgraduate equivalency in both math and physics."

Even the air around Heero seemed to cool in the wake of that answer.  "They should have had an engineering section."

Duo couldn't resist a sidelong glance at him to see what a put out Heero looked like.  Much like a normal--hah!—Heero who wore a scowl that knotted his brows, but his mouth hadn't tightened and turned down at the corners.   "They should have," he agreed sympathetically.  "Idiots not to.  Everyone should know engineering.  Basic part of the human experience."

Heero paused for a moment, then asked, "How did you do on the writing portion?" 

Ouch.  Stung. Heero still could pick a good target, not that Duo hadn't been asking for it.  He tried to breeze through it with, "Oh, not too bad, not too bad.  Tenth grade level, though I s'pose it could've been worse.  At least I write better than newspapers."  The air around Heero warmed.  He was gloating, the bastard, Duo decided, and asked the question he knew Heero was waiting for.  "You?"

"Second year college," Heero said. Definitely with a smug air.

"All those reports you had to write for J came in handy for something, I guess."  Duo fixed his gaze earnestly on a BSO poster tacked just below the ceiling above the train window opposite them.  It announced a performance next month of "political commentary of the musical persuasion from L5 to Mexico City"--consequences of living in a government city, Duo guessed: even the music was affected.

Heero shot him a sharp look at the implication that his reports had had little other purpose, but began, "Didn't you . . . ?" before stopping with the query unfinished.

"For the following question, make your selection from one of the multiple answers," Duo announced in the style of the exam, pitching his voice too low to be overheard even by briefcase-man in front of them.  "Faced with the quandary of foiling Operation Meteor, you: A, destruct Deathscythe and murder G and his assistants; B, steal Deathscythe and engage in guerilla warfare; C, join a pacifist movement; or D, do nothing."

The subway train lurched forward again and began accelerating.  "That's why you were always generating your own missions," Heero surmised.

"That's why I never wrote reports," Duo said, allowing his voice to return to its proper tones.  

"But you keep in touch with G now."

Duo inhaled the coffee scent rising from the mug held by a woman who had come to stand next to the briefcase guy with no small longing.  "Well, yeah.  Guy rebuilt Deathscythe for me, didn't he?  And I was with him a little over two years--never hung around anyone else that long that I can remember.  You don't set something like that aside."

"Ah."

Duo volunteered, "Did better on the reading portion, though."

"How much better?"

"College sophomore."

Heero said with open smugness this time, "College junior."

Duo's mouth twisted wryly; it was like the times they'd played basketball during one of their brief boarding school stints.  Heero had a thing about winning.  "My physics knowledge can kick your reading comprehension's ass any day, Yuy."

He almost laughed aloud when Heero, in one of his rare displays of humor, chose to reply in kind.  "Only if my reading comprehension had a hand tied behind its back."

Duo changed his mind and did laugh.  "No way," he protested.  "My physics knowledge has the power of relativity.  Nothing can beat the power of relativity."

Heero considered that in silence for a moment before he countered, "My reading comprehension has the ability to identify fallacious theses at one hundred meters."

"Fellatious theses?" Duo asked wickedly.  "What kind of books did J have you reading, Heero?"

The subway train roared into another station, magnetic units revving as it slowed.  It was their stop.  Duo didn't stop chuckling at the expression he'd caught on Heero's face even when Heero left him stuck behind a snarl of businessmen at the base of the escalator to exit the station by himself.

*~*~*

Heero watched as Noin wrote out her mission report.  She sat straight-backed in her swivel chair, fingers flying over the keyboard in neat, crisp strokes.  She didn't speak as she worked.

Tap, tap, tap.

Her typing formed a brusque staccato against the backdrop of office sounds; the hum of the ventilation system kicking in, the mutter of lowered voices, the odd sound of someone sneaking a potato chip or cracking their knuckles.  Heero heard them all clearly without Duo's familiar conversation to distract him.

He had met up with Noin when he arrived to shadow her as part of his Preventers training procedure.  Since then, he had sat quietly while she typed her mission report, noting the formatting and the length at which she described events.  "…followed suspect to X address on Y street…"  He skimmed over the short paragraphs.  The older agent didn't waste words in her write-up.  Information she deemed important was laid out in quick, precise sentences.

It wasn't so different from what he had written for J, during the war.  Maybe it was a different font size, or the outcome evaluation was given a different priority.  There were more people, agencies and divisions referenced.  The nature of what she wrote was on a smaller scale.  She hadn't demolished whole bases on her own.  But over all, the gist was the same, and the structure was familiar, if not identical.

Tap, tap, tap.

The florescent lights droned overhead, a low, consistent murmur that almost seemed to come from inside his ear.  The white light they produced played with his eyes, making odd afterimages if he looked at one place for too long.  Taupe cubical walls, beige plaster, and speckled grey tiled floor.  There wasn't really much to see.

Most of the other cubicles were empty.  The office space had been designed to accommodate more people than the Preventers currently employed.  It stood to reason that Une, as well as others, hoped to expand beyond their present stature.  Only six field agents.  Eight, now, with himself and Duo.  That was hardly an impressive number, considering the kind of the incidents that they hoped to have them able to answer.

Tap, tap, tap.  _Click_.

Noin paused in her typing and closed the mission report window, only to open another.  She introduced the new form as "Mission Expenditures."  Given the problems with funding, it wasn't terribly surprising to see that.

Then she was typing again.

Tap, tap, tap.

"If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask," she had told him that morning.  He hadn't had any.  The mission reports weren't much different from the ones he'd written for J, during the war…

Tap, tap, tap.

_Wait_.

Tap.

_Didn't I…?_

Tap.

Heero shook his head, attempting to gather the train of thought that had frayed at some point while he watched Noin, but the room didn't follow the movement of his head the way it should have, tilting just a little, not keeping up.  The loss of sync panged in his abdomen.

Swallowing with a throat suddenly gone dry, he reached for the bottle of water on the edge of Noin's desk, only to pull back his shaking hand.  Clenching his fists hard, Heero concentrated on his vitals.  Heart rate and respiration were both accelerated.  Blood pressure above normal levels—he could hear it, rushing through his ears along with the buzz of the lights and the grumble of the heating.  His stomach twisted again and this time he identified the feeling as something he had experienced only rarely in his life: nausea.

Almost reflexively, he fell into the exercises his first mentor had taught him, concentrating on the rhythm of his heart and lungs.  He could control them.  Could control all of his stats if he had to.  He'd been trained in it since before he could remember, and physically, he was at the advantage.

But instead of calming, the roar in his ears grew louder, melting into the quiet office sounds.  He couldn't hear the tapping anymore.  There was something else, though, something vaguely familiar.  Like the harmonics of metal under pressure—the hull of a ship in outer space, or the groaning of Gundanium under water.  It was just there.  Just on the edge of his hearing.

The room was too hot.  A film of sweat broke on his skin.  He could feel it on his forehead, his upper lip, trickling down his back and sides.  The air felt recycled.  He could barely breathe it, as if there wasn't enough oxygen.

"I'll be back in a second," Heero said, standing, not bothering to wait for a response from Noin.  Instead he focused on walking straight and not showing how the floor seemed to be rising up to meet him.

He made it out of sight before he was forced to catch himself sharply against one wall, leaning against it until he got to the men's restroom on their floor.  It was, luckily, empty.  Fumbling with the first faucet he came to, Heero splashed cold water over his face, fighting down the heave that threatened to bring up his breakfast.

The porcelain of the sink was cold and reassuring under his hands.  The tiles drew some of the heat out of him.  For a while, he just stood there, leaning against the sink, head bowed over the drain.

He wasn't quite sure how long it took for before his stomach settled, and the strange sense of vertigo which had overtaken him faded away, leaving him with the raw feeling of unburned adrenaline.

Straightening, Heero raked his fingers through his hair and glanced over his reflection in the mirror.  He was a little pale, and there was still a tremor in his right hand.  Not noticeable if someone didn't know him well, or wasn't looking.

Looking himself in the eye, he asked wordlessly, _What the hell was that?_

His reflection was predictably silent.

Setting the question aside for later, he dried his hands and his face, and hurried back to Noin's cubicle.  Hopefully, he hadn't been gone long enough to be missed.

*~*~*

Duo flipped through his new ID cards with mixed feelings.  Social security number and everything.  He was in the system now.  Sure, he could get out of it if he needed, and the other identities he'd saved were still tucked safely away in his wallet, but Duo Maxwell was a real person as of today.  The thought was mildly disturbing.  He could almost picture the electronic tether.

ESUN citizenship, he noted with flash of wry humor as he looked at one of the new cards in particular, rather than Earth, or Colonial, or specifically L2.  _It's even politically correct._

The elevator chimed his floor, and he put the new cards in his back pocket before stepping out.  The office was nearly empty, with most of the staff already having cleared out for lunch.  He could see Noin waiting with Chas near his desk, tucked into a corner cubicle.  There was another man with them, not much taller than Duo himself, with short black curls and dark stubble shadowing his cheeks and jaw.

Noin waved to Duo, a smile lighting her features.  Chas nodded, talking to Noin about something or another.  The stranger raised one eyebrow appraisingly.  Duo met his look with one of his own, one that clearly said he didn't see any hot shit here, and walked up to Noin.

"What's up, Chas?" he asked, leaning against a partition.

"Not much," the older agent told him cheerfully.  "Now that you're here, we're just waiting for Zechs and Yuy to show up before we head off for lunch."

"Why are you waiting for me?  Or us, I guess."  Duo turned from the other man to Noin.  "And where is Heero, anyway?  I thought he was with you."

"He was.  He went to the bathroom a few minutes ago," she said, pointing down the hall.  "I imagine he'll be back before too long.  We were waiting for you because it's Friday, and on Fridays, the field agents get together and go out for lunch—at least, all of them in the city and not undercover do. Today that's you, me, Chas, Zechs, Heero, and Stepan."

"Whom," Chas continued, "I believe you haven't met yet.  Stepan, this is Duo; Duo, Stepan."

"A pleasure," the black haired man said.  His accent was vaguely Russian, not thick, but lurking.  Duo took his hand when he offered it and shook it once with enough force for him to feel it.

"Not all yours, I hope," Duo responded lightly.

"I'm sure the pleasure will be mutual," Noin said playfully, still smiling.  "And I think I see Zechs coming this way.  Which means we're only short Heero."

The Deathscythe pilot grinned back.  "I'll go make sure he didn't get lost.  Or fall in.  Or something."

"We'll be waiting," Stepan offered.  He smiled, too.  Duo wasn't sure if he liked the look of it or not—it gave the impression that he knew something Duo didn't.

Tossing a hello Zechs's way, the new agent trotted toward the bathroom, only to almost collide with Heero as he turned into the hall.  The possibility flashed through his head just early enough to save himself with a quick back-pedal.  "Hi, babe," he greeted, "Noin was just—You okay?"

Duo blinked.  Heero looked less than a hundred percent, which was rare for him.  His hair was wet around the roots, and his face looked a little grayish under the natural tan of his skin.  There was a little water on his shoulders and dripped down the front of his shirt, as though he had splashed his face.  Duo's forehead wrinkled in concern.  Heero didn't get sick, no more than he did.

"It's nothing," Heero told him, his tone firm.

"You sure?" Duo pressed, ignoring the note of finality in his friend's voice.  "You don't look so hot."

"Thanks," the other pilot said tightly, then changed the subject.  "What were you saying about Noin?"

"Oh." Duo shook his head, shrugging past his surprise.  "She's waiting for us with the other agents.  Says they all go out to lunch Fridays."

Heero nodded sharply, then marched away at a fast enough clip that Duo had to jog a few steps to catch up with him.  _Fine_, he thought, irritated, _if you need a few minutes to cool down or whatever, I can deal with that._  Snorting discontentedly, Duo followed his roommate to where the others stood, Chas talking animatedly about some mission or another where the local PD had made fools of themselves.

"Looks like we have everyone," Noin said as they arrived.  Zechs was standing behind her, sitting on the edge of Chas's desk, eyes hidden behind a pair of expensive sunglasses and one gloved finger absently tracing a pattern around the rim of the mug holding Chas's pens.  Duo nearly smirked at the sight of the two—there was a fairly good chance, in his estimation, that they would be the next engagement announcement he got, though it was not fixed.

"So where are we going?" Duo asked, watching Heero surreptitiously from the corner of his eye as the other grabbed his jacket.  _Shit, is he trembling?_  The hand in question was stuffed in a pocket before Duo could confirm what he'd seen.

He had to be mistaken.  Heero Yuy did not tremble.  Not for anything less than a battle of wills with the Zero System.  He didn't shake when he was suffering blood loss from two bullet wounds, or when he had a broken leg.  He didn't shiver in the cold, even if it was almost freezing.  It did not happen.  It didn't matter if Heero was pointing a gun at someone's head or pouring himself a glass of milk, he was always steady.

Heero avoided meeting Duo's eyes, keeping his own fixed on the ground, like a new pickpocket trying to avoid attention.  But he was too tense.  He'd stick out in someone's memory when they tried to figure out where they'd lost their wallet or their watch, instead of fading into the crowd of faces they saw everyday.

"Is that alright with you two?"  Zechs inquired politely, and Duo belatedly realized he'd missed the answer to his own question.  Heero made an indifferent noise, casting a glance at the other pilot that planted the decision on his shoulders.

Duo shrugged.  "Sure.  I'll try just about anything at least once."

"Are we all ready to go, then?" Noin said, her trainer's voice pre-empting a response from Stepan.  "Good.  Let's go."

They took the elevator down to the ground floor, through the lobby, where the same security officer who'd met them the first day was on duty.  Duo winked at the man as they passed, unable to resist the temptation.  It cheered him up a little to think of the false IDs he'd given the guard when they'd met.

"So I've been meaning to ask," he said as his thoughts bounced from the topic of identifications and driver's licenses and birth certificates to names.  "How do you guys get your code names?  I heard Sally's is Water.  Noin's Fire, I think, and Zechs's is Wind, right?  What about the rest of you?  You just make something up?"

"Zechs just made his up," Noin agreed fondly, bumping shoulders with Zechs as he walked beside her.  "Sally and I had ours assigned, but Une decided to let people choose their own if they really felt the need."

"Mine was assigned, too," Chas told him, glancing over his shoulder at Duo as they walked along the glossy black-glassed front of another skyscraper.  Like the one the Preventers rented space in, this one had the imposing design and a recessed entrance flanked by steel-sheathed columns that reeked of monied bureaucracy.  "I don't mind it, though."

"What is it?"

"Stone," the agent replied.  His cheek ticked when he did, as though he were trying not to grin.

"As in stone-faced?" Duo asked skeptically.  Chas certainly didn't seem like the stoniest character he'd ever met.

"It's the balls that have to be made out of stone around here," was the quick reply.

"I'd have guessed brass."  Laughing, Duo turned his attention on Stepan.  "What about you?"

"It's Krov," he said, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops.  They paused at a street crossing; far down the side-street, Duo could see a lone sidewalk vendor peddling something: probably off-truck electronics, from what Duo guessed by his lack of a lunchtime crowd and the faint blinks of green and blue liquid crystal displays.  "It means 'cold' in Russian.  I thought it fitting.  What about you?  Did you have something in mind?"

Duo considered that.  He didn't really have anything in mind per se, but he'd rather decide his code name himself.  He had chosen every other name he could remember anyone calling him; it didn't seem like the time to stop.  After a moment, he said, "No.  I'll have to think about it.  How about you, Heero?"

"Wing," Heero answered without pause as they passed by a few shops tucked discretely into the bottom story of a high-rise.  He then grunted softly, as though he'd surprised himself with that one, too.

"Wing?" Duo repeated.  He opened his mouth to ask what the fuck his housemate was thinking, but bit back the words so quick he almost caught his tongue.  Heero still looked pale, the winter sun turning him more jaundiced than the artificial light inside had.

The store fronts developed more animation on the next block, brass name plates and wooden placards with gilt lettering giving way to brightly lit signs, paint, and the occasional flash of neon.  Carefully arranged plantings of trees and convoluted metal sculptures likewise yielded place to potted bushes and evergreens; traffic in automobile and on foot increased and grew colorful as fashion overtook somber suits and dark sedans. Duo scanned the passing pedestrians with a practiced eye; upmarket clothing meant money, but also suggested more plastic than cash on hand. 

"This is it," Chas announced, stopping at a bistro; in response to the day's sunlight and relative warmth, perhaps, tables were set out for patio dining.  "Gustav's" was written across one of the restaurant's wide front windows in flaking yellow paint.  A green-and-white striped awning protected the outdoor patrons from the weather, and gave the place a rather cliché look in Duo's opinion. "I don't see any seating for six, though.…"

Stepan shrugged.  "Shift one of the tables out a little and steal some chairs."

Before he was asked, Heero moved closer to one of the tables, braced his feet at shoulder width, and tugged it away from its neighbors.  The heavy table moved grudgingly, its cast-iron feet scraping a complaint of metal against concrete.  Cringing at the sound, Duo looked down at the source and saw something he hoped to God no one else had noticed: the table had been bolted to the ground.

"I think that's enough," he suggested, concentrating hard on keeping his voice natural as he took an extra chair from a table waiting for clean up.  He almost sighed with relief when Heero let go and took a seat beside him.

"Wing, eh?" Chas provided a welcome distraction.  "That was your Gundam, right?  Old habits die hard, I guess."

That was too close.

"It was just the first thing that came to mind," Heero said, his gazing intently at a blank spot on a sandstone wall across the street.

After a moment, a waiter appeared from inside bearing a tray of water glasses and an armful of menus.  After distributing his load and firing off a quick round of questions, he left with two orders for black coffee, one for café latte, one cola, and two more assurances that just water was fine.

Under the table, Duo caught Heero's hand, running his thumb over the other's palm; the skin was thick, and calloused, and very well known.  The former Wing pilot tensed at the contact, throwing Duo a black look, which he ignored.  Cocking his head at a questioning angle, he mouthed "What's up?" behind his menu.

Heero pulled his hand free, covering the motion by taking a drink of his water.  The sudden squaring of his shoulders, the flexing of the jaw, the way his brows drew down over his nose and the corners of his mouth tightened all said in that loud, silent way Heero had that his companion's concern was neither warranted, nor appreciated.

Duo watched Heero's profile, stung, for a long second before turning back to the list of lunch special.  _Okay_, he thought, gritting his teeth and trying to brush aside a flash irritation.  _His call.  _He turned his attention back to the list of lunch specials.

He'd picked up enough German to puzzle out most of the dishes.  Cheese fondue, pasta with cream sauce, a wide variety of sausages—he decided it was probably safer to stay with what he knew.  At the moment, he wasn't in the mood for surprises.  Making up his mind, he set the menu aside and tried not to let his gaze drift to the rust-stained holes in the cement where the table had been bolted.  They all but flashed a neon sign in their call for attention--but the waiter hadn't said anything.  Duo would keep hoping he didn't.  "Any suggestions?" he asked into the quiet of the others' reading.

On Heero's far side, Noin shook her head, saying briefly, "Never been here before."  She tapped something on her menu and tipped it towards Zechs.  "Split with you? What are you going to have?"

"The tafelspitz with kohlroulade and salad," Zechs replied coolly.  

Duo couldn't decide if the tone in his voice implied he was making the best of a bad deal or was merely indifferent to whatever was put before him.  Tafelspitz--beef with some sort of sauce, he thought--couldn't be that bad.  

Before he could decide, Stepan spoke over Zechs' further reply to Noin, following up on her earlier comment with, "The beginnings of a new tradition, in fact."  He wore an odd half-smile when he replied to Duo, as if partaking in some private joke.

Heero looked up from his menu as Duo glanced between Stepan and the others.  "New tradition?"  Heero asked.

Chas shot Stepan an obviously irritated glance.  The Russian agent's smile curved a little more widely and made Duo change his mind--Chas was being baited, here, not him.  "What was the old tradition?  I thought you said you got together Fridays for lunch?"

Zechs slid an ironic look at Chas, folding his hands together below the tabletop.  Belatedly remembering a comment of Relena's made while she'd been visiting him during that state trip of hers last fall, Duo removed his elbows from the table and leaned back in his chair.  "Occasionally traditions come up for re-election," Zechs commented lightly.  "This leads to new campaign promises."

Appealing to the agent seated opposite him, Chas said, "Lu, you agreed with me."

"Only that they might not be interested, Chas," she replied, nodding her thanks to the waiter when the man reappeared to distribute their drinks.

"You said you thought lunch was a good idea!"

"And it is," Noin protested.  "But I didn't think _in replacement of_, I thought _in addition to_."

Stepan took his glass in hand, glancing down the table at Chas. "You were the one who brought age into the equation."  He had a look Duo easily recognized as adding fuel to the fire and waiting to enjoy the results.

"Age?" Duo asked carefully; it was obvious that the 'they' spoken of was himself and Heero.

"Chang wasn't coming, either, so I thought--" Chas said defensively.  "Oh, hell! I give up."  He picked up his menu and ostentatiously held it in front of his face.

"Sally, Chas, and I started getting together Fridays after work when we first started," Noin explained to Duo.  "None of us have lived here before, so we didn't know anyone else to go out with in the evenings."

"We went to _bars_," Chas muttered.

Stepan said chidingly, "And played pool.  It isn't like we did nothing but drink."

"So," Duo said, aligning all the pieces together with too much ease and taking care to keep from sounding as exasperated as he felt, "you decided to stop doing that because we're _underage_?"  He listened to Chas' spluttering explanations of "know you're not a kid" and "carded all the time" with only half an ear.  Damn, it was too bad Wufei hadn't been here for this.  Duo would have to make sure to be the first to tell him. With Chas standing nearby, if he could arrange it.


	7. Irrational Equations

And here's the next installment! Usual disclaimers apply.  R for language.  Consider language underlined--there's quite a bit of it this time around.  Angst, post-EW, newtypeness.   And please, in most humble supplication, let us know what you think, even if it's to fling a tomato!  We are insecure and needy authors to whom feedback is as ambrosia to the gods.

7.  Irrational Equations

Duo was staring so intently at Heero's plate that he felt moved to take a look at it himself, studying it critically in the light of the florescent kitchen lamp.  Nothing unusual met his eye, however: simply a few grains of rice and a smear of orange sauce from the last of the previous night's chicken.  A lone slice of green pepper drew his attention, so he snared it with his chopsticks and ate it methodically, not really enjoying the flavor, but it least it gave him something to pay attention to besides dwelling on this morning.  Peppers did not reheat well.

He looked up to find Duo's glance still fixed on the plate.  "What?"

Duo answered slowly, as if he were still turning things over in his mind.  "You ate all your food."  Duo's own plate still had some of the fried rice on it, but his elbow was on the table, chin propped on hand with his fork set aside.

Such an obvious statement couldn't be the sum of what Duo had in mind, so Heero prompted him with an, "And?" as he got up and carried the paper plate to the sink, flipping open the cupboard beneath to throw it in the trash.  He didn't really want to hear what Duo had to say about this.  He'd rather get it out of his mind as soon as possible, would that faint background rumble only stop teasing at his senses.  

"You hardly touched lunch.  Were you sick or something?"

Shortly, "I don't get sick." Heero said shortly as he threw the chopsticks after the plate, "I don't get sick." .  The lie sat felt uncomfortably on his tongue, so he kept his back to Duo after he said it, turning the tap on to let the water warm up.  Even the hum of the refrigerator and the rush of the water reminded him of it, made him think of the noise of Wing's engines heating.

The synthetic wood of Duo's chair legs creaked as he shifted.  When his voice came, Heero could tell that Duo had turned to look at him.  He filled the drinking glass once the water began to steam.  "C'mon, man.  You looked like shit, and then you brushed me off. You wouldn't do that for no reason.  Did something happen?"

Heero frowned at the glass, emptying it.  He had finished with the matter.  He didn't need Duo's prying.curiosity resurrecting it.  The sound of the refrigerator was nothing more than the sound of the refrigerator.  Flatly, squirtingSquirting green dish soap into the glass, he said flatly, "Your concern was inappropriate."  A change of subject would, at the very least, get Duo away from airing his thoughts about this morning.  

"What?"  Cloth rustled, presumably as Duo straightened, his voice baffled and touchy, as if he were on the verge of being offended.  He had picked upfocused on thethat word, as Heero hadHeero'd known he would.  

HeeroThe Wing pilot wet the sponge and, filled the glass partway with water and began washing it.  Irritation and unease lessened as he considered his next words carefully.  There was a difference between explaining things to Duo and pissing Duo him off; negotiating that divide was a welcome diversion.  "Our jobs . . . they are public.  And our relationship is private."

"_I'm_ certainly not going to spill my guts to Une about it, no," Duo said tensely.

Heero ran the sponge around the rim of the glass, watching the bubbling trail of soapy water left in its wake.  "Yes.  Private should stay private, and public stay public.  Mixing . . . causes confusion."

More than a little disbelief in his tone, Duo asked, "You mean, the way we didn't fuck while we had missions, we shouldn't let our hooking up overlap with work?"  Accusingly, he said without waiting for an answer, "You told Sally."

_Duo and his obscure L2 slang_, Heero thought with a momentary return to, his earlier irritability returning briefly before he rinsed the glass off and set the sponge aside. He forced himself to reply evenly, "She asked me if I was sexually active. I said yes.  She knows we just moved here; with that data, are you surprised that she guessed?"

Instead of answering the question, Duo irritatingly asked another.  "What about the Wufei? Quatre knows, and since he does, Trowa's going to. We keeping Wufei in the dark?" 

"We're professionals."

"So?"

"He's a coworker."

He could feel Duo's glance resting on him with a steady focus.  After a brief pause, during which Heero placed the glass on the drying rack and, swished the sink clean and ignored the buzz of the ceiling light, Duo said, "Hadn't thought of it like that."  His voice was carefully neutral to Heero's ears.  He fell silent a moment more, then said, "Yeah, man, I guess if that's how you want to play it, I'm game."

Relieved at having avoided a scene, or at least a challenge about how enjoyable a little overlap could be now and then, Heero grunted an acknowledgement of the comment, turning around to collect Duo's flatware and plate.  "Done?"

"Huh?"  Duo's intent look of thought faded as he jerked his glance down to the plate and the remainingscraps of food there.left on it. "Guess so. Yeah."  He lingered at the table as Heero tossed that plate into the garbage as well, and began to wash the flatware.  "Yeah, so . . . you--you got any plans for tonight, babe?"

"No."  Heero contemplated the water running off the edge of the knife, flexing his fingers beneath the outpour from the faucet.  Was Duo going to proposesuggest sex?  He wouldn't mind that.  Being inside Duo . . .  felt warmer than this.  His scent wasn't that of scorched Gundanium and hydraulic fluid.  He was alive, bone and muscle and flesh that Heero could hold onto and lose himself in.  Heero drew in a breath at the thought of that release and resulting ease, turning the tap off as he anticipated Duo's next words.

"So, you, uh . . ."  Duo's voice held atypical hesitancy; Heero restrained himself only with an effort from saying something and diverting the proposal. Slowly, Duo continued, "want to, maybe, rent some videogames tonight?"

The backboard of the sink was fourteen tiles wide and eight tiles high.  Heero counted them all as he gathered his thoughts.  "Videogames?" he asked at last.

Duo's chair scraped against the linoleum floor as he stood.  "I thought . . . maybe we could do something besides sit around and watch some newscast," he said.

_Besides sex._ Heero concentrated on keeping his fingers relaxed where they gripped the edge of the counter.  And breathing evenly.  From the nervous tread of Duo's steps behind him, what he had said must have bothered Duo more than his roommate was choosing to let on.  Hinting at sex now would serve no useful purpose.  "Alright."

Duo's voice brightened with relief. "Really? Cool, man! I'll go see what kind of hook-ups our 'screen can take for the game console.  We'll go when you're ready, 'kay?"

In Duo's wake, Heero dried his hands off with a towel, then dried the two glasses and Duo's flatware as well.  There hadn't been anything difficult about his request.  It wouldn't be hard for Duo to maintain some separation between the public and private aspects of their lives.  And then difficulties like today's encounter outside the restroom wouldn't happenreoccur.

GlassesThe glasses went in the cupboard above the sink, flatware in the drawer to its left.  In the living area, he could hear Duo putting on his shoes and knocking the toes against the base of the step into the living room.  The noise made Heero flinch in renewed irritation.annoyance.  Did Duo _have _to do that?  He had to be more capable of putting his shoes on than an eight-year-old.He had to be able to do something as simple as putting on shoes without being needlessly loud.   After wiping the sink dry in a last measure of tidiness, he followed Duo into the living room, nodding in response to Duo's cheerful, "Ready?"

Duo locked the door behind him after Heero slid his shoes on and stepped past.  The three blocks Duo said it would take to get to the nearest video store were mostly filled with the sound of his voice ranging lightly from topic to topic.  He started with a, "I still can't believe what Chas said about not wanting to take us inside a bar.  What, does he think it'll corrupt us or something?  Lured by the wickedness of alcohol, we'll become _terrorists_?"  

The last word was laced with enough irony that it would have roused Heero to an involuntary laugh, were he not already criticizing Duo's penchant for hyperbole.  Even Duo's skill at making things look easy was just a form of exaggeration.  He changed the topic. "These videogames you mentioned.  What did you want to get?"

"Oh, whatever," Duo said carelessly.  "Maybe two to start? You could pick one and I could pick one. I don't know much about them, really.  Though I think a lot come from Asia. Japan."

Heero sidestepped to avoid knocking down a little boy tugging on his mother's hand as he tried to hurry her forward.  At least Odin had taught Heero how to behave himself in public. "Not likely in Japanese," Heero said.  The lights changed and they crossed an intersection.  

Duo shrugged his shoulders beneath the jacket he wore, his hands tucked in its pockets against the winter cold that still kept the trees bare even at the end of the season.  The red collar of the turtleneck he had on beneath it showed when he looked away to watch a cyclistbicycle pass them, his glance lingering on the cyclist'srider's pumping thighs.  "Beats me.  Nah. Probably they'll all be in German."

"That'll be a problem for you?" Heero asked, turning his focusattention from the cyclist to the street in front of them.  

He saw Duo's mouth curling in derision out of the corner of his eye.  "Not any more than it will you, Yuy."

Feeling back on familiar ground, some of the tension leeched away.  His hands relaxed inside their pockets.  Heero said, "What will I get if I win?"

Duo grinned, the light in his eyes one easily recognized by Heero..  This was perfect: Duo would wager sex; he'd follow suit with the same, and either way the results went, he'd have what he wanted from the evening.  "Well," Duo said in a low voice as they turned the corner.  Heero cast an inquiring glance at him, catching that odd uncertainty he'd heard earlier in Duo's voice.  At a more normal pitch, Duo asked, "What would you want?"

The shift in tone startled Heero.  Why was Duo being so indecisive all of a sudden?  Was he implying that he should want something else than sex out of such a deal?  What other options were there?  Were there things other people--_other civilians, a corner of his mind whispered to him--typically bargained for?   Dourly, Heero cast around for some other possibilities.  Brownies?_

"Wait, here we are," Duo said, a hand to Heero's arm checking him before he could walk past the glass door with its theatre lights and neon signs glowing cheerfully into the dim evening dimair.  

A chime soundedrang as they entered, eerily like Wing's life support loss-of-integrity alert.  Heero stiffened his shoulders as he followed Duo to the console shelves, shoving the memory aside to focus on the units Duo indicated with a sweep of his hand.  "Any of these'll work with our 'screen.  I don't think all the games are compatible, so you pick one of these--I don't know anything about 'em--and then we'll each get a program to go with it, okay?"

Heero resisted the urge to ask how Duo expected him to make any more informed a choice and abruptly picked up the first console within reach, a sturdy cube that would be easy to carry.  "This one."

"Alright," Duo said, scanning the placards lining the tops of the shelves and then nodding.  "Over there.  Any of the ##Seno games."  

Nodding, Heero carried the console to the indicated section.  All the game chips were in alphabetical order, their sleeves decorated with colorful labels.letters and cartoons.  This was easy.  Heero picked up the first game in the first row, glancing at its logo of racing wheels and flipping it over.  He ignored the advertising text with its eccentric vocabulary and verified that--yes, it was a two-player game.  That would suit Duo, he was sure.  Expectant, Heero looked up for his roommate.

The other pilot strolled casually down the aisle on the far side of the shelf, his head inclined as he read the labels of the games arranged on the shelves.  Heero stared at Duo, disbelief prickingneedling him like needles..  Duo couldn't be intending to evaluate every game here before selecting one, could he?  

As he watched, the other pilot stopped and picked up a cartridge, flipping it over to read the summary on the reverse.  Heero began to relax, but stiffened once more as Duo put the cartridge back.  "Duo?"

Duo glanced up as Heero followed him around the corner to the next aisle, his eyebrows lifting when he caught sight of the cartridge stacked on top of the game console.  "Figured out what you want already?  That was fast, babe."

Heero just grunted acknowledgement of the comment, impatiently watching Duo stroll down this aisle without even picking up a single game chip. Near the end of the aisle, Duo selected a couple cartridges and read the summaries, taking his time to look between them both.  Heero could see his lips move slightly, as if he assessed the weight of their titles for entertainment potential.

When he put them down again, Heero muttered, "I'll go get us ready to check out," and stalked towards the front of the store without waiting for a reply. The store still empty but except for them and the clerk, but even the lack of a line didn't settle the frustration knotting Heero's spine.  This wasn't a life decision. It wasn't even like buying fruit at the grocery, where you took your time to ensure you didn't select substandard produce.  

His gathering scowl must have startled the clerk, for the girl stammered as she approached the check-out desk.  "Y-yes?"  She was taller than Heero in a manner that suddenly made his neck itch in aggravation; it wasn't so bad on L1 or in Asia, but here in Europe almost everyone overtopped his height, and it was _annoying._

"I'd like to apply for a membership," he said flatly.  "What information do you need?"

The stuttering clerk typed in his address and phone number, making at least three mistakes per line as he stood there with the console held in the crook of his arm.  He gave her Duo's name as well; hearing it, Duo approached just as Heero handed the clerk his bank card.  "Almost finished, huh?"

"Have you made a decision yet?" Heero asked, his jaw tightening as he looked down to see a game chip in each of Duo's hands.  

"Still deciding. What do you think--" 

_Still _coming to a decision?  Furiously, Heero said, "We'll just take them both," and suited action to words, snatching them from Duo's hands and setting them down on the counter with the game console.

Or, rather, _slammed _them on the counter.  The ##Seno console shattered under the impact, its black casing breaking apart to spill a tangle of wires, chip reader, and motherboard onto the countertop.  

The clerk gasped, jerking back as Heero lifted his hands and shook a few clinging fragments of black plastic from them.  "Damnit."

"What the hellwas that for, Yuy?" Duo snapped in a hiss, empty hands fistingcurling into tight fists.

All the day's frustrations burned through Heero, a fire's leading edge which left an blaze in its wake.  He balled his own hands.  Turning to face Duo, he spat, "Why the _hell can't you make up your mind?"  Nails bit into his skin; heart pounded as if, caught in the flames, it had run out of oxygen._

"Um," said the clerk.

Duo drew back as if struck.  His mouth thinned as his lowered his chin aggressively, eyes dark as he glared back at Heero.  "Hey, man.  I don't know what the fuck's your damage, but--"

"Um--um, please leave now," blurted the clerk.  She flinched when the two of them spared her a look, but held out Heero's bank card at the end of her fingertips, keeping as much distance from them as possible. "The console will be charged to your account."

Duo snarled, "Fucking charge away," turning his back on Heero to shove the door open and leave.  Heero snatched his card from the clerk, teeth set grindingly tight as the door shrilled its alarm at Duo's and his own passage.   Duo was waiting outside, his hair and jacket glowing red in the light cast by the neon sign on the shop window.  "Do you realize what you just did?" he said as Heero glared at him.  His voice was sharp, the words biting. 

Heero said savagely, "If you hadn't--"  He forced the words out through the fury tangling inblocking his throat, but Duo overrode him.

"That fuckin' unit cost _half a paycheck!  And you _broke _it because you were pissed I _took too long_?"  Duo had lost any pretense of keeping his voice lowered; giving them wary glances, pedestrians began to walk into the street to avoid passing too closely.  "Do you know what kind of attention that stunt could get you?"_

"The time needed for executing such a decision--" Heero ground out, his blood thundering so loudly in his ears that his head throbbed with it.

Duo interrupted him again, his glare furious.  "_Execute _the _decision_?_  We ain't in the fuckin' war anymore, Yuy! I can make my mind up slow's an armless crip wanks off for all it matters, Mr. Not-in-fuckin'-public asshole!"  _

It wasn't like fury lit by adrenaline, which sharpened his senses and brought Wing to life around him; this fire grasped at any straw in an attempt to burn to greater heights, fueling Heero's rage but bringing no light with it. "Your use of language leaves much to be desired."

Duo narrowed his eyes, one fist drawing up as he let loose with a stream of profanity in at least five languages, finishing with, "And if you don't get _that, _then screw yourself sideways with a razor and a clamlappin' _goat, you motherfuckin'cunt-rag _sumbitch_!"  Turning on his heel, he stalked down the street, passers-by shying away from him._

Heero stood in the space left around him by the pedestrians, clenching and unclenching his fists, then turned back towards the way they had originally came.  The first breath he forced himself to take shuddered its way into him.  His shoulders were so tight it felt as though his muscles would tear. "Shimatta."  ItHe said, then again and again, until it became a chant, leaving him feeling burnt-out and hollow in its wake.. "Shimatta, shimatta, shimatta."  

He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the jumpiness of his thoughts, the way the honking of horns and tread of feet and sound of brakes and the shrill, —nasal, —deep, —scratching voices of people tried to blow the embers back to life.  He focused on his heartbeat and, returning to the exercises of his childhood, tried once again to slow his heartbeatspeeding pulse; this time--he took another breath and released it slowly--this time it worked, even if he felt raw inwith the wake of the irritation growing cold and dimloss.

He would go home and --. . . He cursed again, viciously, as memory flickered to life and seared him.  He hadn't brought his keys. Duo had locked the door behind them; _Duo _had the keys, but he didn't.  And from the direction Duo had taken off in, he wouldn't soon be returning to the apartment.  His ire rekindled.  Of all the days for _Duo, who was the one who knew how to pick locks and had the least need for them, to have the keys.  Heero didn't even have a gun on him to shoot the lock with, and if he kicked in the door, that would simply be another charge against their security deposit--._

He gave a bitter laugh, and began walking in the direction of the video store once more, heedlessly brushing his way through the other pedestrians in the straightest line possible.  He'd find Duo, and he'd get the keys, and then Duo could come home when he liked.

*~*~*

In the quarter hour it took Heero to locate his roommate, Duo had apparently had time to talk himself out of his temper, for he acknowledged Heero's presence with a sideways look and a quirk at one corner of his mouth that wasn't too far away from a faint smile.  That was just like him, Heero thought sourly.  As quick to anger and calm again as he had been to shoot and kill during the war.  If only he made up his mind with that kind of promptnesshaste.

Duo was also apparently taking Heero's return as some sort of apology, for he cleared his throat after they paced in silence a few more minutes and said, "All that shoutin' has dried my throat out. Wanna get somethin' to drink?" 

Heero just shrugged, deciding to humor the other pilot; the sooner Duo satisfied this impulse, the sooner they could get home.  And Duo could think what he liked, since he apparently had thoughts to spare and then some when it came to making decisions efficiently.  

Taking Heero's shrug as assent, Duo tipped his head back to scan the signs of the shops that lined the street.  He nodded to one with letters shining with gilt in the light of a fairly tame lamp.  "That one."

The inside of the restaurant was subdued and quiet; Duo claimed two seats for them at the bar and gave an order to the waiter there.

"Identification, please?" The man asked.  Instead of pulling out the new card from his wallet which he'd just gotten that morning, Duo showed the waiter the older one he'd been using.  Heero recognized it for one which listed Duo's birthdate as a year prior.  Duo's pointed look had him keeping his mouth shut as he handed the waiter his own matching identification card.  

"It's champagne," Duo said, after the waiter had returned to deposit to stemmed vials of a pale, bubbling liquid.  "'Cause, well, I figure we've had our first fight and can be glad it's over now, hey?"  He gave Heero a measuring look; Heero wasn't sure if it was lingering anger or distrust that made it look less than friendly.  "You first."

Heero eyed the straw-colored fluidalcohol, then drank a mouthful, swallowing a couple of times as the liquid slid down his throat.  "Uh," he said, less than thrilled with the experience.  It was sour, bitter, and pointless, all of which made it an odd choice for a celebratory drink, but one which fit well withthat matched his mood.  He decided against drinking some more.

Having watched him a moment with the sharp gaze of a scientist eyeing a specimen under a microscope, Duo finally condescended to take a swallow of his own.  His grimace was more pronounced, as was his expression of distaste.  "That stuff is _foul.  What the hell do people think they're drinking when they have it?  I bet Deathscythe's coolant fluid tasted better."  His eyes slid back to Heero. "You gonna drink the rest of yours?"_

The lingering slurring of Duo's accent into the more careless rhythms of L2 was probably Duo's way of daring him to comment further on the topic.  Finding himself rather tired at the thought of responding in any way--let alone with the excess he'd displayed earlier--Heero just shook his head in reply.

"Wanna leave?" Duo asked.

"Yes."

Duo produced some credit chips from a pocket;. Heero had never been able to figure out how he stashed them so that they didn't make noise as they rubbed against each other when Duo moved.  Leaving them on the counter, Duo slid off the stool.  "Me too."

Walking down the street once again, Duo surprised Heero by asking, "So . . . what d'you wanna do tonight?"

Heero considered that, trying to figure out from the street signs where they were in relation to their apartment; none of the road names seemed familiar.  That Duo was asking the question again probably meant no sex of any sort would be happening at all.  He didn't even feel dismay at the thought; the prospect of the energy which Duo usually brought to the activity just made him feel more tired.  "I don't know," he said after they had passed a few more businesses.  

From the tightening of Duo's mouth, he supposed more effort than that was required.  "We could play a game."  Since Duo had been engaged enough in the idea to suggest it in the first place.

Duo shot him a sharp glance, the flickering light from a storefront catching on the faint shadow of stubble that lined his jaw.  "Know any card games?" he asked, pointedly not mentioning the evening's earlier prospect.

"No."

"Any board games?"

"No."

Duo stopped and pointed to a gaily lit shop across the street.  Its display window was full with the mechanized twitches of miniature robots and luridly colored mobile plushes.  "Go pick something from there, then," he ordered, looking suspiciously gleeful under the cast of his stubborn expression.  "I'll wait out here."

If Duo could make a decision with such alacrityso promptly now, perhaps he had purposefully been trying to irritate Heero earlier.  It was in perfect accord with the some of Duo's established patterns of of Duo's behavior for that to be the case..  Heero grunted, waiting until there was a break in the flow of automobiles, and crossed the street.  

Noise and color assaulted him the minute he walked in the shop door.  Past tables piled high with boxes and bins overflowing with even more unrecognizable items, it looked as though there was an entire aisle filled with nothing but an intense shade of _pink.  No wonder Relena liked the color, if she had been indoctrinated with these things._

"Can I help you find something?" the cashier asked, coming around from the counter and looking at Heero curiously.  He had no sense of balance; Heero could have taken him out by hand by the timebefore he'd turned eight.  Or at least what Heero had been told was his eighth year.  "Are you buying a gift for someone?"

"A board game," Heero said, and nodded once when the cashier directed him to an aisle furthest from the pink row.  He selected the first box he came to which didn't have cartoonscaricatures or iridescent print on its lid; its picture of a cup and some dice looked rather mild by comparison, and maybe. Maybe it was not even a board game at all.  Duo could take what he got, however.

He paid for it and returned to Duo's side, thrusting the bag stiffly at the other pilot.  "Here."

Duo gave him the first grin since they'd left the apartment, tucking the package under one arm.  "Thanks, babe."  

From the way Duo walked, he, at least, knew where they were.  "I don't think it's a board game," Heero said, trying to ignore the way the smile made him feel marginally better at the same time it irritated him with guilt and irked him that Duo could be so casual after having caused such an uproar earlier.  They headed down a side street.

"You chose it," Duo said cheerfully.

"That doesn't make it special," said Heero flatly.

Duo's chuckle stung Heero.  "I just meant that if it sucks, it's your fault."

"Be glad it isn't colored pink," Heero said as they waited for a crossing light.  Perhaps this was the night to see about getting some of those questions he'd had about Duo answered; Duo certainly owed him some sort of explanation in exchange his night's work.

*~*~*

Heero set the game up in a silence that sawed at Duo's nerves, only breaking it to explain the rules in aan unrelieved monotone.  He couldn't be angry still, could he?  Not after he'd followed Duo to apologize, though Duo hadn't made him say anything aloud.  But what the hell was biting his ass today?  

Duo drew a cube on his score pad while Heero took the first turn, thinking.  And that whole fucking not-at-work thing.  He hadn't realized Heero intended their relationship to be _that casual.  It was how you handled the people you dated, like Hilde with Jean, not the people you roomed with.  And Wufei was a friend, not just a coworker. __Heero's ideaview of things has some weird boundaries, he decided. __Not that Duo was going to volunteer to be taken down by friendly fire again tonight by saying anything._

They swapped the dice and, over the course of a few more such exchanges, the cube transformed into an external diagram of Deathscythe's hyperjammers.  Duo scratched it out irritably when he noticed, and used the end of the second game as an excuse to start with a fresh score sheet.  It developed a pyramid formed from silhouettes of Heero's favorite Beretta bullets until Duo scratched it out, too, and determined to pay better attention to the next game.

It proved mildly was kind of amusing, Duo figureddecided, watching Heero's hand as he shook the cup of dice for another turn.  Calculating the probability behind the dice rolls was somewhat interesting, too.

But Heero still hadn't said anything about a wager with which to accompanyaccompanying the game.  Duo felt the silence pressing down a little too tightly to make him want to risk raising such a topic again--Heero had certainly seemed thrown off-balance enough by the first time he'd done it, though it was hard to tell how much of that directly related to Duo's suggestion and how much to whatever screwy things were going on in Heero's head lately.  _Especially when he's so eager to make me into some kinda scapegoat, he thought resentfully.  Heero tipped the dice onto the kitchen tabletop.  _

Heero chose to roll a third time after studying the second set of dice and marking down something on his score pad.  Duo snorted to himself.  _He'd be better off cutting his losses and not having bothered. That only had an 8% chance of helping his score_.  He let his mind wander back to his previous train of thought when Heero passed him the dice cup.  He gave it a shake.  _This isn't making a difference. We talk more watching a newscast, for Chrissakes.  This was a stupid suggestion, Hilde_.

He spilt the dice out, barely paying attention as he marked his choices and decided the odds were in his favor if he rolled three of the dice again.  _I think I'm gonna win this time, too. Wonder if I should try that bargain.  He did _sorta___ imply we could keep it going, and I haven't asked him a thing.  Don't know how this is supposed to be better than having sex otherwise._

_As if anything is better than sex_, he thought derisivelywithout much enthusiasm, passing the cup to Heero rather than taking another turn: the probability it would improve his score was too remote to even ponder, let alone make it worthwhile.  He ignored the comparison between Deathscythe and sex which wanted to make itself concrete in his mind, belatedly remembering to mark down his scores from the second roll.

_I could ask him about . . . I could ask him about. . . ._  Duo contemplated the possibilities.  _Don't exactly want to jump into the 'who'd you first kill' level of things, but I'm damned well not gonna ask what his fucking favorite color is!  Besides, the mood he's in, chances are good he'd ask about something he knew I wouldn't want to talk about on purpose._

Something nigglednagged at his attention, drawing his thoughts away from the various questions to find Heero fixing him with a predatory challenge in his gaze.  It wasn't a look Duo remembered having seen before, certainly not one of the usual glares. "Heero?  Isn't it your turn to roll and all?"  

Instead of answering the question, Heero set the cup down and said evenly, "I wish you would stop cheating."

"The _hell_?" Duo blurted, stunned.  He lifted his chin from his hand to glare at Heero.  "What the fuck do you mean by that?"  

Heero's expression didn't change; he continued with his assessing look.  "I mean you've been cheating."

Duo stood angrily, the movement shoving his chair back from the table. "I don't know what the hell you've been on today, Heero, but if you think I'm gonna let you suggest--"

"You have won all three of our games so far," Heero said calmly, his voice piercing through Duo's words.  "You're winning this one, as well.  Not a single roll you've made has been to your detriment. What's the chance of that?"

"I--" Duo said haltingly, trying to think back over his casts since the game began.  _I haven't.  _Have I?_  A chill crept into his belly._

"I said, _what's the chance of that_," Heero pressed.

_God damn it,_ Duo snapped to himself, closing his eyes and then blinking them open before he could be drawn into focusing on what the probabilityhow likely it was that he had done as Heero suggested.  He glared at Heero. "I don't know."

"Not 'I haven't' but 'I don't know,'" said Heero in a measuring tone.  He must have caught the flinch Duo made at that, for he continued, "Do you know why you jump _before someone touches you? Do you know why you knew it was a telemarketer _before _the 'phone rang? Do you know why you had 'bad feelings' about things when we were fighting OZ?  What's the chance of __that?"_

Goaded, Duo burst out with a, "Is tonight's entertainment going to be round two of trying to fuck with me, Heero?  'Cause I swear I won't beI'm not the only one who'll end up with shit inon his face if you want to start ass-betting like that."  

Heero's expression grew cold even as Duo could see an angry heat flushing up his neck.  "Your problem with the videogames--" he began.

"That was _your _problem, Heero, not mine!"  A thump on the ceiling suggested their voices had become too penetrating for their upstairs neighbor's liking.  Duo rested both hands on the tabletop and leaned forward to say venomously, "So if you wanna talk about my freaks, we're gonna discuss some of _yours."_

Duo was so close he could see the crease appeared between Heero's brows, athe minute forerunner of a frown.  "Mine?"  

"God!"  Duo snapped upright, folding his arms as he glared at Heero.  "_Yes yours!  What the hell did you think you were doin' tonight, breakin' the console in public like that?  All but send up a signal flare you're a fuckin' newtype--no shittin' wonder she asked us to leave!  And then that table at lunch, did your brain short-circuit in the shower this mornin', or have you been hopin' I'd invites to the motherfuckin' _media_ for you?"_

He kept his eyes fixed sharply on Heero, whose eyebrows had twitched up a hint.  His jaw worked a little in silence.  "I'm not like you," Heero said at last.  "I used the Zero System, Iwasn't the Zero System."

Duo just stared at him, feeling a furious heat creep into his cheeks. "I'm not some fuckin' psychotic tool, so _fuck you, Heero Yuy!"  _

He turned away to leave the kitchen, ignoring the scrape of Heero's chair as his roommate stood.  Heero could take the fucking Zero System and shove it up his Gundamfucking shitcrack.  And where did Heero_ get off going around as flashy about his abilities as Quatre, when Heerodidn't have Quatre's resources, Quatre's family, or Quatre's job? And then coming down on Duo for it, the hypocritical asshole._

"_Duo_," Heero snapped.  

Duo kept walking.  _I'm the one with the fuckin' sense to keep it quiet, and he suggests--  His thoughts underwent a reversal.  __Damn right he's not like me!  On the heels of that thought came the prickle of hunch and he focused on his surroundings--_

---and spun and caught Heero's wrist before his hand could grab hold of Duo's arm.  "I want to talk," said Heero.

Duo's fingers were white-knuckled with his grip of the other's wrist, ignoring the way Heero wasn't resisting the hold.  "And I want to take a shower," he hissed.  He threw Heero's arm away from him, pulling back with his shoulders straight, then purposefully relaxed the tautness of his taut muscles.  "Know what, Heero?  There's an 80% chance in the next thirty seconds that I'll be leavin' to do that, too.  There's a 5% chance that I might just deck you one."  He smiled, sharp and cold.  "And the odds are three to twenty against that you can say something that'll make me change my mind.  That a betgamble you wanna take?"

He could almost feel the way the possibilities fluctuated and shifted as Heero took that in; the way one future after another cut off when Heero considered and then discarded different responses, only to have others flicker into awareness as he moved on.  Then everything came together, narrowed, focused as Heero said, "Yes."

Duo smiled mirthlessly, hooking his thumbs in his jeans pockets.  One set of possibilities fell away under the impact of the moment and new ones sprang from it, like fucking spider cracks in a windshield.  He shifted his weight, preparing to turn around.  "Fourteen seconds and the odds are one to five in my favor."

"Our bargain. I asked and you answered.  It's your turn," Heero said, crossing his arms and staring at Duo with belligerent challenge in his expression.

"You _shit_," Duo said with feeling, hands slipping from the pockets to fist tightly.  "You _always _beat the odds."  That fact, before so reassuring, was now just another kick in the ass.head.  He crowded Heero, stepping closer until they were almost toe to toe. "So you want questions?  Then I'll ask.  What the fuck's got into you today?  You like poking at corpses to see 'em twitch?  And why the _hell don't you follow your own rules and keep your newtype crap private?"_

Heero somehow managed to give the impression that he looked down his nose at Duo, despite their equal heights. "The first two. Are they rhetorical questions or are you asking for answers to all three?"

"You can take your rhetorical and shove it--"

Mouth flattening in a line, Heero said, "J never asked me to."

Duo looked at him incredulously for a moment, then said, "You just remember that the colonies cast us both off durin' the war, and they'd do it a lot faster if they knew what you were.  More like a devil on the doorstep than a saint, and no-one goes for either."  He stepped away, then turned around and headed down the hall towards the bathroom. "I'm takin' a shower.  Now that we're fuckin' even on the questions."

Heero told his back, "I'm going to use the computer."

"As long as you're outta my room by the time I'm done, Yuy.  And screw you in advance about any hair in the bathroom." 

*~*~*

It wasn't surprising to Duo that he had trouble getting to sleep.  What better way to end such a bad day than with a little insomnia to add insult to injury?  Or maybe just insult to fucking insult.

His anger had cooled while he lay in bed starting at the textured ceiling, but, uncommonly, it hadn't left.  Most of the time, if he could get away from whatever had pissed him off, he could talk himself out ofdown from whatever ugly mood he'd gotten worked himself into.  This time, however, his internal diatribe kept going, covering the same ground again and again, wearing paths into his thoughts.  The fucking _Zero system_.  He didn't even want to get started on that obscene little piece of shit. And what the hell was Heero thinking?  J hadn't told him to.  You didn't have to be a genius to take the initiative on this one.  He'd had the gall to look surprised, too, when Duo had turned the tables on him.  As though it had never occurred to him that bending _steel_ with his bare hands was conspicuous.

Duo flipped over on his side, staring at the clock instead.  It was only a little after midnight--still time for him to get some sleep.  His hand went automatically under his pillow, and his fingers met the reassuring metal of the gun he'd tucked there.

_Hell of a security blanket,_ he thought grimly.

He'd rather have had Heero, but something had apparently crawled up his ass and died.  Whatever it was, he could pick it out on his own.

A headache was growing behind Duo's eyes, doing nothing to improve his mood.  Maybe  the result of focusing so much on his dubious _talent_.  Turning his face into his pillow and shoving back his drying hair, he tried and failed to push his agitation aside so he could get some sleep.  He and Heero were supposed to go in to the office for a half-day tomorrow.  He just wanted to shut off for a few hours before he had to face things again.

But he smelled Heero's aftershave on his pillow.  It was something cheap, and it was supposed to smell spicy, but in reality it was just hot and bitter.  The smell hit the back of his throat and settled on his tongue.  Duo's headache flared in response.  _Fuck._

Was there some sort of law of nature that said shit had to all come down at once?  Or was it just his luck?

The smell burned his mouth, and suddenly the leftover Chinese he'd had for dinner became more of an unpleasant premonition than a memory.  Swallowing, he tasted aftershave, and his stomach clenched.  It was a feeling he knew from his childhood, from when he'd stolen something too sugary or too rich for his system to handle: he was going to throw up.

In a flash he saw the likelihood that he'd be able to keep his last meal down dwindle away and he shot to his feet.  One hand clamped over his mouth, he rushed to the toilet.  He managed to lift the lid--which Heero had inconveniently left down for some totally unknowable reason--mostly in time to avoid making a mess.

Duo knelt, shaking and clutching the bowl even when he his heaves settled for the moment.  His head felt like it was about to crack open, and his eyes and nose stung.  His throat felt scraped.  With one shaking hand, he twisted his loose hair back, silently thankful that it had avoided getting puked on.

Then his stomach twisted again.  He tried to hold it back, but it was a loosing battle.

He hadn't heard Heero follow him, didn't know he was there until the other pilot gathered his hair and held it while his body rebelled again, emptying what seemed like more food than he'd eaten in days into the toilet bowl.  He didn't say anything, just calmly waited for this round to pass.

Panting, Duo pressed his forehead against the cold porcelain.  The bathroom seemed almost unbearably warm.  The cold was a welcome relief.

"Are you alright?"  Heero asked quietly.

"Yeah," Duo said bitterly, wincing. "Just fuckin' peachy."  Talking made his headache worse, like someone was hammering spikes into his temples.  "How 'bout you?"

He didn't turn to see, but he could feel Heero shifting behind him.  He didn't bother trying to figure out how his roommate would respond to that; his head hurt too much to care.

"It couldn't have been food poisoning," the other said, leaning down behind him.  Duo could feel him, not quite touching, just a solid presence at his back.  Yeah, that was Heero. "We ate the same thing."

Duo squeezed his eyes shut, pushing away the pain like he would have an injury during the war.  But it didn't work the way it should have.  The feeling remained lodged in the front of his mind.  "Maybe," he gritted, "or maybe I'm just not as perfect as you.  Maybe--"

Whatever else he might have said was cut off by a dry retch that shook his whole body.  And again.  And again, as his stomach fought to bring up even more.  His hands tightened convulsively against the rim of the toilet, as he coughed, choked, and sputtered his way through the latest assault.  When he caught his breath again, Heero was gone, and his formerly clean hair had fallen forward.…

_Fucking hell._

Rising unsteadily, Duo flushed the toilet, then went to the sink to wash his face and get some painkillers from the medicine cabinet.  His whole body ached, and he was tired.  He didn't think he'd ever been this tired before in his life.  Sighing heavily, he climbed out of his boxers and stepped into the shower.

Despite it all, he still had trouble getting to sleep when he finally made it back to bed.


	8. Data Interpretation

Here we go.  We have finally pounded this chapter out.  All the usual disclaimers apply.  AU-ish.  Post EW.  Warnings for language, and angst.  Feedback is adored and worshipped. 1x2x1, I guess.

**8. Data Interpretation**

Duo pulled his still damp hair over his shoulder in a half-hearted effort to ease the weight of the wet braid on his neck.  He didn't even have the energy the get properly frustrated with it, though he wasn't looking forward to how clammy his braid would get once he got outside.  Aching with fatigue, he sat down in front of his computer and, after one bounce, dialed the number he had to contact G.  The line started ringing.

"Are you making a call now?" Heero asked as he appeared from his bedroom.  He sounded as tired as Duo felt, and there were dark smudges under his eyes.  "We have to leave for work in less than fifteen minutes."

"That'll be plenty of time," Duo returned evenly, light-footing around any conflict.  He didn't have another fight in him this morning.  "This'll only take a sec."

Heero gave a neutral huff as he struggled with his tie.  Duo rubbed the bridge of his nose, looking away.  He doubted Heero would appreciate the help if he straightened it for him.  How his housemate had arranged all those convoluted neck cloths and cravats that neo-Revolutionary fashion had made him wear, yet couldn't manage a simple tie was a mystery for the ages.

The phone kept ringing.  _Come on, come on, come on,_ Duo chanted mentally.  _If that old coot's moved again without giving me a new number, I'll kick his wrinkled old ass—_the other side of the channel opened with a click, and G's ugly face blinked into life on the screen.

"Duo," the old scientist greeted him, then said, "You look like something I found growing in a petri dish I left out by accident."  Always the soul of tact.

"Thanks," Duo said, his hand once again massaging between his eyes where last night's headache was threatening to come back.  As if this call wasn't hard enough to make.…  "I always _love_ being reminded when I look like shit.  Listen man, I'm sorta in a rush here, I got work in less than an hour, so can we maybe skip the 'harass Duo' part of the call?  It would save me some time."

"Go ahead," G told him.  "I can harass you whenever I want.  It's not like you don't give me ample opportunity."

A snort from behind his shoulder told Duo that Heero had caught that comment.  Stellar.  The day was already getting off to a shitty start.  "Yeah, yeah.  Later.  You remember all those shots I got before coming dirtside?"

"You may think I'm ancient," G chuckled.  "But I'm not senile.  What about them?"

Duo forced his mouth not to tighten, kept himself from licking his lips or fidgeting.  Instead he smiled shortly.  "I think maybe some of 'em aren't doing any good any more."

"Really?"  The old man leveled a sharp look over his nose.  "What makes you think that?"

"I thought spending half the night trying to hack up something vital might be a hint," he said acerbically, laying both hands flat on the counter top.  "I'm a bright kid, y'know."

Lips twitching up into a half-smile, G nodded.  "I wouldn't have let you take my Gundam if that weren't the case."  Then he frowned.  "Is this the first time you've gotten sick?"

"Yeah—"Duo began, but Heero cut him off.  "No."

Duo shot the other pilot a look.  Heero had come up behind him and gotten closer than he should have been able to without his knowing.  This living together deal was making him slow.  Heero's profile was nearly expressionless as he repeated, "No," then sent Duo a sideways look.  "The other day, after you got out of the simulator."

"That wasn't the same," he retorted quickly, a short flash of irritation sparking in the words, but it faded almost as quickly as he identified the emotion.  He was too tired for another argument.

"Well," G said, interrupting Heero before he could make any sort of response.  Whatever he'd been about to say, the likelihood of it improving Duo's mood had been slim anyway.  The not-quite-headache riding behind his eyes throbbed once as he considered the probabilities.  G continued.  "Two episodes, you say?  Maybe you had better come visit me and we'll have a look at you."

"If it's just a vaccination, I can get it here.  No reason to fly to L2 for a flu shot."

"You're the one who called me," G told him, "Do you want my advice or not? I'm not going to speculate on old data."

Duo met the professor's beady stare for a long moment before he relented, throwing his hands in the air.  "Fine.  I'll talk to Une today.  What the hell?  Not like I have anything better to do with my fucking time than go visit you."

"It is time to go," Heero reminded him suddenly.

"Alright, alright," Duo muttered in reply.  Mustering himself, he said to G, "I'll call to let you know when to expect me," and moved one hand to the keyboard to disconnect the call.

"I'll have the red carpet out," G said before Duo could do so.  "Hail the conquering hero and all that."

"The hell?" Duo blinked at the black screen, trying to think past the ache behind his eyes.  "Was that aimed at you?" he asked, swiveling his chair around to face his roommate.

Heero's tie looked lopsided, his brows narrowed above is nose in pinched irritation.  "I don't know.  It doesn't matter.  We're going to be late."

Duo levered himself from his chair, stifling a moan.  "Damn it.  I can't get to L2 and back before Monday.  Une and Durstang are going to be pissed.  Except," he continued, brightening a little at the thought, "if I tell Durstang the alternative is puking my guts over his shoes. He might not mind then."  He shoved the chair beneath the desk and glanced back behind him to see how Heero had appreciated the comment, but the doorway was empty.  

_It's gonna be a long day._

*~*~*

Heero stepped out of the elevator into the sterile, beige and grey office space and followed Duo as he paced up to Martje's desk.  The other smiled as he stepped up, the expression slipping seamlessly over his pale features, hiding the fatigue that had marked his posture all morning.

"Hey, Martje," he said in the same voice which Heero had heard get him through customs time and again during the war.  "Is Une busy?  I need to chat with her a bit."

The woman looked up from the form she was working on, eyeing the pair through wireless glasses.  "She's talking with Officer Po at the moment," she said, fingers stilling on the keyboard.  "I could call back and see if she has a minute?"

"That would be great."  Duo leaned back, shoving his hands the pockets of his jacket.  With a glance at Heero, he said pointedly, "Y'know, you don't have to tag along."

"I think I will anyway," the Wing pilot said, shrugging.

"Suit yourself.  No skin off my nose."

He pushed away any curiosity at that statement.  It was almost assuredly another L2 turn of phrase, and he was fairly sure he understood the gist of this one.

"You can go right in," Martje said suddenly, closing a vid window on her computer.

"Thanks," he told her with a wider, warmer grin, and started back to Une's office, Heero a step behind.  A moment later, they were at the door. Then Duo was through it, walking in on a conversation between the Director and Sally with an insincere "Sorry to interrupt."

Une cocked an eyebrow at their entrance, and Heero closed the door behind them leaning against it rather than take a seat next to Duo, who had collapsed in a seemingly haphazard position that put his both hands within easy reach of places he _used_ to hide weapons.  Heero controlled the urge to study his companion more closely.

"Gentlemen," Une said, her eyes flicking from one to the other before settling on the seated pilot.  Drumming her fingers once on the top of her desk, she continued.  "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Something's come up," Duo told her.  "I need to visit G, and he's on L2.  Which means, I won't be here on Monday for my mission with Durstang."

The Director's brow went up another notch.  The corner of her mouth twitched, but Heero couldn't tell if it was amusement or annoyance.  "Really?  Are you requesting leave, or asking me to give him your regrets, agent?"

"Both, if it's possible."

"Denied," the woman responded firmly.  "Unless you can explain to me why I should let you go when your first assignment begins the day after tomorrow?  I realize this is a new experience for you, Maxwell, but you answer to me now."

Duo chuckled.  "I know that.  The thing is, G thinks some of the vaccinations I got before dropping to Earth might not be cutting it anymore. So he wants me to hightail my ass back up to visit him so he can be sure."

Heero frowned, but didn't correct him.  Sally looked interested now, leaning forward, her thumbs playing with her belt loops. "Who is this G?" Sally asked shrewdly.  "And what makes him think that?"

"One of the Gundam creators," Une supplied.  "We had them all in custody for a time.  He was one of the more vociferous ones, as I recall."

Duo stared at Sally blankly a moment before saying, "He was the one who sent me to Earth."

Sally's jaw tightened.  "And that leads to him giving you medical advice how?"

"He's done it before.  The vaccinations, like I said.  Hell, he's a doctor."  He made an expansive gesture with his hand, then it fell again, close enough for an easy draw from an ankle holster, if he were wearing one.  Heero followed the movement with his eyes, wondering if it was a habit, or if the other pilot really was armed.

Sally frowned.  "He was responsible for your medical treatment?"

"_Yes_, that'd make sense when that's why I called him, wouldn't it?"

"And why him, and not Sally if you're feeling ill? Or a local hospital?"  Une said, tilting her chin curiously.

"Well, hell," Duo snapped tartly, "who knows what kind of shit he shot me up with? If it's his problem, he can fix it."

Sally jumped on that, her eyes taking on the light of someone who's just discovered a winning gambit.  "So you think that might explain the anomalies in your medical records?"

There was a cold pause.  Duo tapped the heel of his boot idly; Heero didn't know what he'd kept there. When he finally spoke, his tone was carefully neutral. "What anomalies?"

The Wing pilot was surprised when Sally missed the edge in Duo's voice.  She answered his question reasonably, ticking off points as she went.  "Both you and Heero showed abnormal brain activity." One, forefinger.  "Both of you showed almost no stress in the soft tissue scans, but I know for a _fact_ that both of you took a great deal of abuse.  You yourself said as much." Two, middle finger. "Duo's reflexes are, frankly, impossible.  Nerves don't relay that fast."  Three, ring finger. "Heero was in a coma for more than a month, without any sign of brain damage." Four, little finger, and her eyes cut curiously toward Heero.  "And both of you show signs of substance withdrawals, but no sign of addictive agents."  Five, thumb, eyes back to Duo.  "At first I attributed it to your being newtypes, but when I compared the results to Zechs' and Wufei's medical records, it didn't match."

The moment that followed was like the instant between knowing you were shot, and feeling it.  Calmly, Heero assessed the damage.  He already knew his vitals weren't standard; now they knew as well.  He had found out the night before that Duo was a newtype, and knew more or less what his ability entailed; now they knew that too.  How they would respond to that knowledge was what would matter, and presumably they'd had the information for a while.  They implied similar knowledge about Wufei and Zechs, though, and it hadn't seemed detrimental to them.

Substance withdrawals.... The slow, hissing intake of breath was the only prelude to Duo's sudden outburst, pre-empting Heero's evaluation of the circumstances.  "That rat-_bastard_!  He knew.  He knew this morning, and he didn't tell me.  He—fuck—he knew before that.  He fucking knew when I told him I was moving in with Heero.  He asked…  That old fuckin' stain.  When I get my hands on him, he's gonna wish I just killed him."

Heero watched as Duo shot to his feet with enough force to upend the chair he'd sat in.  He stalked away from Une's desk, muttering under his breath now, and cracking the knuckles of his right hand one at a time with his left, then reversed.  Jerking his head sharply to one side, his neck popped as well.

His shoulders tensed, his jaw tightened visibly.  It was like watching a gun being cocked, the trigger pulling back more and more tightly.

"Mister Maxwell," Une broke in, her voice ringing with every bit of authority she'd ever had.  "I would thank you not to put a hole in my wall."

Duo hadn't been a soldier.  His training hadn't taught him to respect that tone when he heard it.  For a moment it looked like he'd punch the wall in front of him just out of spite.  Heero moved closer, ready to intercede if his housemate pulled back.  But the tension drained out of Duo's stance instead, and he looked every bit as tired as he had that morning, after he'd spent the night huddled over the toilet.

"So you did know then…" he said softly.  Heero could almost believe it was too quiet for the two women to hear.  

"That you were newtypes?"  They shared a glance before Sally explained.  "Yes, we knew that.  Howard told Zechs that only a newtype was capable of piloting a Gundam.  Everything we've learned about the Gundams since then has been consistent with that.  Not just anyone can pilot them."

Duo snorted, the corner of his mouth curling up in a mocking smile, and his eyes slid closed.  "I see."

Sally's voice was edged with displeasure when she asked in the silence that followed, "So your assumption is that this G is responsible for these anomalies?"

Heero looked away from Duo, frowning.  "I'd like more details on that: the withdrawals. From our exam results?"

"Fucking results," Duo spat, with a renewal of his anger, like the last spatter of an exhausted bomb.  "Fucking exams, and fuck all doctors."

"I'd like to know too, Duo, if someone was experimenting with illicit—"  Sally began sharply.

"He was sending a terrorist to Earth.  You expect the guy to balk over _medical ethics?"  Duo said._

"Both of our exams?" Heero pressed.

Duo straightened, fixing Heero with a bitter glance.  "What, do you hope you've been left out, buddy?  I damn well bet that G wasn't operating alone."

"Yes, both," Sally said tightly.  "It's evident in the soft-tissue exams; quantifiable aberrations in neurophysiology similar to those in people experiencing withdrawal from substance abuse are apparent in both of your scans.  If you've been experiencing any headaches, anxiety, nausea, irritation--those are all the more common outward symptoms.  In more advanced cases, fever and blackouts.  Hallucinations, possibly.  It's hard to say for certain if we don't know what you're going through withdrawals from."

"Thank you Miss Medical Encyclopedia for telling me everything I could ever already know about a fucking come-down," Duo snarled, shuddering visibly.  His hands twisted into white-knuckled fists.

For a second, Heero wished he were in Wing's cockpit again.  Things had been clearer there; he'd had a job to do, and he did it.  The weight of metal around him would have been reassuring just then, and the vibration of the engine through the seat, the controls comfortable under his hands.

Une cleared her throat, and all attention returned to her.  "In light of this, I think I am forced to approve your request for leave.  I assume you'll be wanting time off too, Heero?"

Heero looked up, rather shocked to be addressed.  The memory of the day before loomed over him, from the near-panic attack in the office, to his raw temper.  There was really no need to consider; he nodded his agreement.

Shaking with a harsh, silent laughter, Duo turned a cynical glare on him.  "That was it, yesterday."  He said, and shook his head.  "That was it.  I can't fuckin' believe you, Yuy."

Heero didn't meet Duo's accusing stare.  Instead, he kept his focus on Une.  "Thank you," he said.  "When are we expected back?"

"Take as long as you need," she told him, resigned.  "I can't very well have either of you in the field until we have this sorted out."  With a wave of her hand, they were dismissed.

*~*~*

Possibilities throbbed behind Duo's eyes, splitting and writhing, and attempting to branch into innumerable paths, each one dwindling into the infinite.  They were practically begging for his attention.  The migraine he'd get looking at them and his own bad mood were enough to hold them away.

Gritting his teeth, Duo considered taking the stairs just so he didn't have to wait for the elevator.  He wanted to _move_, damn it.  Vaguely, he was aware of Heero stopping beside him.  And vaguely, he was aware that the other would probably say something.  He didn't encourage it, hoping the likelihood would fade, but he didn't check the odds.

Mentally, he scrambled through a dozen languages for words virulent enough to vent some of the anger that was bubbling up in him.

Words weren't doing it.  He wanted to fucking hit something.  He wanted to blow shit up, to create some mayhem.  He wanted bedlam.

He would settle for G's head on a stick.

The elevator doors slid open with a hiss, and Duo stepped inside.  Heero followed him, silent.  _Placid_ in the face of finding out that they were, what?  Junkies?  Fucking addicts.  Anger warmed him, and adrenaline buzzed in his system, not quite chasing out the tired ache in his muscles.  _Oh, I'm glad Heero can face this with a cool head, because I'm sure as hell not gonna!_

"Duo?" Heero ventured.  Impassive.

"Shut the hell up," he growled.  Then, smiling, he said, "No offence, man, but you ain't my favorite person in the whole fucking world just now."

"What the fuck did I do?" his housemate returned, sharp and cold.

"Not a damn thing, Yuy," he said, letting himself grin.  Somewhere in his head, someone was laughing, and he was pretty sure it was him.  "Not a goddamn thing."  He could feel Heero's glare blazing at him, and he just didn't care.  It wasn't enough.

_Withdrawals_, he thought, and couldn't quite contain a bitter chuckle.  The laughter tasted like bile and ash.  His memory supplied images of hunched, skinny bums shaking in alleys, willing to do anything for the next fix.  He could see them, scratching at spiders that weren't there while flies landed on their faces.  He knew to stay away from them.  There was no telling what people like that would do.

_Oh, Christ_.  His throat threatened to close up, his eyes burned, and he smiled.  He was going to kill G.  And those other mad scientists while he was at it.  No reason to play favorites.  _If that's what I have to look forward to, I am going to kill them._

The door slid open, and he stepped out, marching through the lobby without seeing it, past the security check without looking at the guard.  He didn't stop until he was outside, on the sidewalk.  The air was cool, fresh.  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

It didn't do any good.

Turning, he started to walk away.

"Where are you going?"  Heero's voice was unwelcome.

"Where do you think?" Duo spat back.  "I'm not going to buy a motherfucking gift-basket."

"The subway station is the other way."

_Way to state the obvious._  "Yeah, I know that.  But the bus stop to the spaceport is this way."

"You're not going straight to L2," Heero stated.  There was no question in it.

"Why the hell not?  Can you think of something higher on my priority list?"  the Deathscythe pilot riposted.

Heero's eyes fixed on Duo's, a murky, indeterminate blue-grey in the winter light.  Duo could feel what he was about to say building, possibilities shifting to make room for it, as much as he pushed that sense to the back of his mind.  "You said you would call G to tell him when to expect us.  And we should pack, if we're going to see J afterward.  I've done the traveling with only the clothes on my back thing before, and I don't see any reason to do it again if it can be avoided."

"I think G's lost the right to courtesies like phone calls," Duo said.  Heero wasn't getting angry; he wasn't scared.  He wasn't responding at all.  It grated slowly on Duo's nerves.

Heero shrugged.  "Then don't call him. It still makes more sense to go home first."

Damn it, I don't want to make sense.  I want to shove a thermal scythe straight up that old man's ass!

"Do you really want to spend the whole trip in your Preventers uniform?" Heero asked reasonably.  "We book a flight from the apartment.  We'll still be gone before midnight."

"How can you be so fucking calm about this?" Duo hissed, finally.  "You heard what Sally said, didn't you?"

"I'm not calm," Heero corrected, his unresponsive tone saying it was a lie.  "I just want to know what's going on before I decide how to react."

Once again Duo looked for words, any words that might release some of the tension winding him tighter and tighter.  Finally he settled on a long, broken, "Fuck."  It took a little of the violence with it; not enough of the anger.  "Fine.  Have it your way.  We'll go home first."

Heero nodded once, and led the way back to their apartment.


	9. Tracking Causality

Here's the latest!  Standard disclaimers apply.  R for language; 1x2x1; post-EW; AUish with newtypes.  Feedback welcomed like manna to the Israelites!

9.  Tracking Causality

Heero snapped his toothbrush in half, broke the bottle of aftershave, and twisted the knob off his closet door before he even finished packing.  When he bent and then cracked the pull-tab to his bag's zipper, he sat down beside it on the bed and stared at the warped piece of metal on his palm.  He tossed it aside.  The tab landed on the floor; he heard it bounce once as he stared at the carpet in front of him.  Slatted sunlight broke across its nubby surface, casting it into an uneven tan landscape and spangling the dust-motes drifting through the air with gold.  They hadn't yet bought a carpet cleaner: the dust would accumulate until they did.

_Inefficient. _Just because Duo was pissed didn't mean he had to lose control of himself also.  J had had years more with him than G with Duo; he'd become accustomed to more extensive interventions than an injection or two.  That one was going wrong now--if one were going wrong: would J have even desired a tool to outlast its purpose?--shouldn't be a . . . surprise.  

He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, a momentary refuge from the midmorning light in his bedroom.  He could hear Duo in the other, angrily stabbing at his laptop's keyboard.  It sounded as though he'd stopped typing and was simply attacking the keys with stiff-fingered prodding.  

He was as certain as Duo that the scientists were involved somehow, but what had J done? Why had he done it? What had he intended? _Insufficient data_ was the only answer that Heero had, and that wasn't an answer at all.  There was no purpose to this that he could grasp, no way that this made him a better soldier.  Civilian.  He paused, resting in the darkness of his closed eyes, and considered the thought.  All of his training, all of the interventions, had been to make him a better soldier.  But he wasn't one anymore; couldn't be, if they were to have peace.  Was that it? Had he really overrun his course?  He inhaled slowly, the scent of soap and skin from his hands filtering through to him.  He didn't even smell like himself.  No cordite, nor the machine oil he used in Wing, nor even the pervasive tang of Gundam hydraulics fluid.  His breath hitched as a wrench of queasiness twisted in his gut. 

_No_.  Fingers curled into fists; he forced his heartbeat and breathing into a smooth rhythm, ignoring the chill that wanted to creep along his skin.  This served no purpose.  One couldn't make decisions at this point; one could only plan, and who knew if Duo had gotten farther than _leave _and _get to G_.  Dropping his hands, he stood, took the haversack, and left the room.

Duo's faded black duffel bag sat in the middle of the floor where the futon would be laid out in the evenings; he himself sat in front of the battered table that served them both as a computer desk, his laptop showing a cascade of windows and lines of text too small for Heero to read from the doorway.  Without turning around, Duo said tersely, "1500 credits is the cheapest I can get for here to L2 for us both, leaving today. One way."

Heero thought of the narrowness of the distance between commercial shuttle seats, the way that Odin's knees had poked into the aisles when the man had tried to fit himself into their confines.  First-time flyers sick from the inner-ear imbalance of zero G.  Tourists.  Layovers.  Lost luggage.  He eyed the gun tossed next to the duffel on the floor, and an all-too familiar pouch next to it.  Port security.  "No."

"Fuck! How do you expect me--you got any idea what chartering--" Duo cut himself off mid-rant.  "I'll charge it to one of the asshole's accounts," he announced.  Heero could clearly picture the tight-lipped smile and narrowed eyes that accompanied the satisfied tone.  He'd seen the expression more than once on Wing's com screens.  Duo flexed his fingers and began typing again, leaning towards the laptop in his intensity as a sheaf of windows collapsed and others opened in their wake.

"Check to see if the account's still open," Duo muttered.  Heero decided it was the beginning of Duo's self-narrating monologue, and tuned him out.  Picking up a few twist-ties from the top of the dresser by the door, he sat down next to the duffel on the floor, tucking his feet under in seiza, and began to braid the ties.  He hadn't yet asked why all the twist-ties from their garbage bags and bread bags ended up in Duo's room; maybe they were intended as emergency hair ties. 

He threaded the braided wire through the zipper loop on his knapsack, bringing the ends together and twisting them around each other.  A tug--firm, but more cautious than his previous pulling of it had been--made sure that the improvised tab would hold.  The white and orange paper wrappers around the wires already looked dingy and worn from the handling, but the purpose would be served despite their appearance, which was all that mattered.

Setting the knapsack aside, he took up Duo's gun, ejecting the clip and giving the gun a swift once-over to verify its condition.  He didn't expect to find anything amiss--its matte finish identified it as the 9mm Duo kept under his pillow, so would be in perfect shape--but nothing was hurt by the activity.  

The heft of the metal, the snick and clicks of pieces sliding in and out of place, the familiar routine of the check relaxed Heero as nothing else had since Wing Zero's detonation had removed its more extensive inspection needs from his routine.  He'd always meant to fix Wing's alternator master toggle; it liked to stick in more humid weather.  Had he taken that switch panel off entirely, he could have rewired the alternator controls to eke a little more output from them. . . . He sighed, tension fading from his shoulders.  If he closed his eyes, he could picture every light, display screen, switch, and indicator on the avionics stack.  A little warmth crept through him at the thought.

"Yes!"  Duo's triumphant whisper cut through Heero's small slice of quiet; his hands tightened involuntarily around the gun before he caught himself and consciously relaxed his grip, thumbing the safety and setting the Beretta aside.   "Bastard's still using the account, and the pretty baby is full, full, full.  _Plenty _for us."  Duo's vicious delight quieted into a few more taps on the keyboard.

Heero eyed the pouch next to the duffel; it was obviously full, judging from its rounded sides.  "Duo."

"Bet it's stuff I transferred to him from OZ to begin with, so it's sort of . . . mine already.  I'm just repossessing it. Yeah," muttered Duo.  Turning to look up at him, Heero saw Duo's fingers twitch over the keys.  "Heero. . . ."  His tone was speculative, halfway to cajoling.

"No."  He spoke over Duo's sigh, "Why the explosives?"

Fingers flickering, Duo completed a transfer and closed the connection.  His reply, when it came, was casual, absent-sounding as he opened up a new series of windows.  "Never know what you might need on L2."  But the pause, as naturally arranged as it seemed, caught Heero's attention.  Duo didn't need to concentrate that much on a hacking job of this caliber; he could manipulate silence like it was a cloaking device.

"Duo."

"Shit, do you really need to ask? The fucking bastard--addicted to some _drug_," Duo spat, slapping his hands down on the tabletop.   Anger seethed from him, jaw and shoulders and fists wound tight as he spun in the chair to pin Heero with a furious look.    
  


Despite their proximity, despite the similarity of whatever it was happening to them, Heero abruptly felt every inch of the distance between them and more.  He wouldn't have--couldn't have--loaded that single word with as many nuances as Duo packed into it.  Half of them he couldn't even identify.  He couldn't guess what Duo was thinking, or was likely to do, and they didn't have the time to ask.  He looked down at the pack of explosives, the gun: familiar tools, from a familiar time, familiar interactions.  "I--" he started, stopped, and tried again. "What's the--mission?"

"The _mission_," Duo said with scathing disbelief, then shut his eyes tightly before he could see Heero's flinch.  He inclined forward the slightest of degrees, fists resting on his thighs.  Whether the movement was from tension or apology, Heero couldn't tell.  "No. Sorry."  He inhaled slowly; Heero counted fifteen before Duo blew his breath out in a measured release, lifting his eyelids.  His gaze was steadier as he returned the look Heero gave him.  "Have to talk to him first," he said at last, grudgingly.  

Heero frowned.  Duo considered that a plan?  "Too imprecise.  How are we going to get there? What are we going to do before that?  Do you know anything about the area he's in? What security does he maintain?"  What kind of assignments had Duo's scientist been giving him?  He should know better just by the models they had provided.  

"You're the one who wants a plan, _you _decide," Duo retorted, brows lowering.

The one time they'd stayed together in the boarding school, they'd been given the same assignment.  But Duo had spent time after that finding schematics for the base and the destroyer which had been their target; his mission details, unlike Heero's, must not have included specifics of attack route or timing, or else the schematics would not have been needed.  He thought back to the conversations he'd heard between G and Duo.  G had seemed almost as casual about things as his housemate.  There'd been only "get to L2," and nothing about how or when or where.

Heero moved the pack of explosives, putting it down beside the Beretta. Maybe Duo needed to learn about planning missions.  "You know L2. You know G," he said, and kept quiet until he knew the silence would be gnawing at Duo, unzipping the black duffel.  He put the dark gray pouch inside.  The hardness of a sock-covered weight announced the presence of Duo's handheld inside already, but nothing else met Heero's grasp; Duo hadn't even packed before he'd charged ahead into checking on shuttle flights.

"Fine," Duo snapped. "Back up, then.  Obtain a shuttle, head to L2, call him and get his location.  Secure the shuttle.  Scout--?"  At Heero's nod, he continued. "Scout the area. Meet him and interrogate the bastard.  Then decide."  Sourly, he finished, "That suit you?"

"It will do," Heero said, rocking back onto his feet and standing up smoothly, the black duffel in his hand.  A flicker of confidence chased away the last of the chill on his skin.  They had a mission. Objectives.  Roles.  He looked down at Duo, who stared at him with pinched brows and a jutting chin.  It wasn't his housemate or lover or co-worker whom Heero saw; it was his occasional partner, and a fellow pilot.  "I'll get your gear together while you finish arranging the other."

When he spoke again, Duo's voice was brisk, professional, the edge of irritation gone.  "Right," Duo said, acknowledging the offer.  With the push of a toe, he swiveled his chair around to face the laptop again.  

*~*~*

When Wufei didn't see Durstang at his desk as soon as he arrived, he headed straight for his own and set the small sword-plant down atop it.  He'd picked it up at the corner market near his apartment, thinking that could use the cheerfulness of greenery; but completing his first assignment as an agent, even if partnered to a woman, struck him as something deserving commemoration.  So he'd reassigned the plant to permanent desk duty.  _Better it than I_, he thought with a sudden twist into humor.

The vibration made by the weight of the pot as he put it down jostled the sensitive computer out of standby; with a flicker, his monitor warmed into color, password entry window blinking.  A moment's consideration had him moving the plant to the left side of the monitor instead, tucking it back beside the cheerful red of Sally's card with its calligraphed message of good health for the Chinese New Year, only a few weeks past.  The veined shades of dark and light green contrasted well with the scarlet, white, and black of the card, he decided, and sat down, satisfied.

Still no Durstang.  Not even the deliberately noisy scraping Wufei elicited from his chair as he pulled it closer to the desk brought the older man out of hiding, though it drew a creak as Noin leaned back in her own seat to check out the interruption.  "Morning, Chang," she said briefly, before turning back to her own business.

The buzz of activity at Wufei's back, where the analysts worked, seemed scarcely diminished from its weekday levels, though the other side of the room, with its unfilled desks and agents' stations the quiet seemed to demand attention. It was Maxwell whom he'd been called in to replace, but the lack of greeting from the occupant of the other desk on the far side of the partition in front of him suggested that Yuy, too, was absent.  Wufei debated whether to bother asking the woman or not only for a moment.  His curiosity won. "Yuy?" 

Noin leaned back again and Wufei tried to interpret the expression on her face.  She was hard to read--all foreigners were, really, with their too-colorful eyes and hair and pale skin to distract from the subtle nuances of expression.  Even Sally, Chinese as she was, fell into that category for all that they'd spoken Mandarin almost exclusively during the past week's assignment.  "Out," Noin said.

Wufei gave a grunt of acknowledgement as he turned to his own computer.  He shouldn't have expected more detail from her, but he frowned nevertheless.  One brief message from the Director left while he had been occupied in the shower had informed him only that he was called in to partner with Durstang in Maxwell's stead this coming week, and should present himself this morning to begin briefing for the assignment; but that Yuy was gone as well. . . . He called up the meeting software; it had already been updated to reflect his absence with Durstang in the week coming.  Yuy and Maxwell were likewise flagged as out of town, but no other agents were, not even Noin who should have been with Yuy as his mentor.  

Another one of the frivolously colored rectangles on the schedule grid caught his attention.  His frown deepened.  _Sally_ had been rescheduled for office presence today, too?  He took a moment to listen, stretching for the sound of activity from her desk; without Nicolov or Maxwell intervening, he should be able to hear her at work; he wouldn't demean himself by doing something so obvious as going to the break room--he didn't drink coffee, anyway--or standing up to look over the intervening partitions, if he even could; he was scarcely taller than they.  Sometimes discretion had benefits.  But he heard nothing over the background of the others in the office, not even the faint click of a keyboard.  

Collapsing the window, he glared at beige cloth of the cubicle surface, then checked his messages.  His filters had flagged and opened the morning's world events synopsis mailed by Ngebe, the most senior of the analysts, but none of its headlines looked like they would have warranted the sudden attention of two ex-Gundam pilots, let alone two Preventers agents who were scarcely more than raw recruits.  

Maybe they'd sent him a message.  _They_ would have known to keep him informed of what involved him.  He closed the events mail and clicked on his in-box, scanning down the list of senders.  There were a couple from Nicolov which he could safely ignore without opening; the man seemed to take an unhealthy delight in mailing odd and intrusive questions at any opportunity. These were only more of the same, and reading or replying to them would only encourage him.  

Martje had sent a message about supplies; he could ignore that for now. . . . The name below hers caught his eye then, pulled him in and made the space between his shoulders itch as if sighted in the crosshairs of a gun.  He let his eyes follow the pixelated characters, the familiar side-by-side with the strange.  _Chang Lin-hui_.  The subject line was blank.

He clicked on it, his irritation and incipient concern gone under the wash of apprehension which swept through him.  _Esteemed nephew, greetings and blessings upon your New Year. . . ._ He skipped to the end of the mail and took in the lineage block she'd attached as a signature file.  Not aunt; great-aunt. Honored Grandfather's sister who had married off-colony, into the Su clan of A01832.  Circumstances might have made him the heir, but even living in another family she was still an elder of his own.  

His eyes jumped back to the message text, skimming through the first paragraph where she set out their relationship, and the second in which she discussed the history of her efforts on behalf of their family.  The third--he hadn't even read the first half-line before the characters for _visit _and _marriage _jumped out at him like Tauruses from an ambush.

_No_, he said against the disquiet that curled in his belly.  _I chose this.  I won't lose this time._

"Hey, Chang," Durstang said, draping his arms over the side of Wufei's cubicle.  

Every nerve within him leaped to fling him from his chair in shock, but he prided himself on the control that had him doing no more than coolly flicking his gaze to the older man.  He closed the message window.  Even if Durstang wasn't literate in Chinese, if he were a newtype, that might be enough for him to read material better kept private.  Wufei'd rather be hauled into court on charges of war crimes than-- He stopped that train of thought. "Maxwell?" he asked in sharp inquiry.

Durstang's wide mouth turned down at the corners, his brow furrowing a moment before it cleared.  "Good morning to you, too, Chang," he said, and waited until Wufei murmured a greeting. He tried not to sound resentful in giving it.   "Why don't we move into the conference room.  I've already laid out the facility blueprints there.  We can get right onto the briefing."

Wufei nodded, keyed in the command to lock his terminal, blanked its screen in standby, then pulled a pad of paper and a pen from one of his drawers.  Rising, he followed the more senior agent towards the corner room with its long table.

Durstang didn't say anything else until he'd closed the conference door behind them.  The morning's bright sunlight spilled through the polarized glass of the floor-to-ceiling windows and across the table and its burden of blueprints.  "The Director said that Heero and Duo are on a private assignment.  She expects them back in a couple of days--not that it helps with this," he said, fingers tapping the schematics as he moved around the table.  "She called me in to talk to her just as Sally was leaving."

Sally again.  And a _private _assignment?  What did that mean?  The Preventers were a government organization, not a company-for-hire.  Private for whom, then?  Maxwell and Yuy?  But if Sally were involved, too--  Wufei realized Durstang had been looking at him intently.  "I knew nothing of this," he said stiffly, not sure even as he spoke whether the words were accusation or defense.

"Ah.  Since Sally partnered you most recently, and you Gundam pilots seem to stick together, I thought you might," Durstang said with an easiness that Wufei envied.  He pulled out one of the tall, overly padded chairs and sat down.  "I guess we can just be in the dark together.  Shall we get started?"

"Yes," Wufei said curtly, taking his own seat.  A flame of irritation lit within him once more.  They hadn't always worked collaboratively, but this time Wufei had been called in to substitute for Maxwell.  Whatever the L2 pilot had involved himself in, he'd involved Wufei too, and should have had the courtesy to give _some _sort of explanation.  

Opening an envelope, Durstang removed a series of photographs and passed them to Wufei.  They were satellite images, magnified and enhanced until the individual details of buildings and vehicles were available.  "These came to our attention at the beginning of the week.  Word from the ambassadors involved is that a splinter group in Karamoja has revived an old quasi-political banner and is stockpiling arms as the Lord's Resistance Army."

Karamoja--the word rang in his memory, pulled his gaze from the photographs to look at Durstang.  He'd been to Uganda once, on the way to attacking the Lake Victoria base.  The northern region had lots of savanna, a few scrubby trees.  He had avoided it as lacking any possible cover for a Gundam.  Then he thought through the rest of what the other man had said.  "The Lord's Resistance Army?"

With a grimace twisting his mouth, Durstang said, "That's partly why the ambassadors asked for our intervention.  It's a Ugandan district right now, but word is the group's rhetoric identifies targets across the border in Sudan. Uganda and the Sudan usually have a fight and swap control over Karamoja every couple of decades.  They're trying to prevent that sort of escalation now.  But the group soliciting members--and donations--from both countries.  So we've been told. They've not been able to prove any of this; they're going on rumors, a couple odd financial transactions, and suspicions drawn from sat images like these.  The main focus of the group's issues seem to be some recent laws passed broadening the number of religious groups recognized by Sudan." 

Wufei snorted. "They don't care for the competition?"  A whisper of air brushed his forehead as the room's ventilation system responded to the light's warmth.

"Political recognition comes with financial support . . . so perhaps."  Durstang waved a hand at the blueprints. "What we've got here are sat images of their compound.  We have offers of support from both countries, either local law enforcement or through the ESUN."

"The former means personal connections between them and the group, I presume.  The second--"  

"No, neither country is pleased by the expense or the publicity they'd get from that.  Duo," Durstang paused, shuffled a building blueprint to the top, and continued, "suggested that we go in and see if we could get the documentation necessary to allow for local prosecution of the ringleaders. He said he wouldn't be able to recognize the materials, but since I could, he could bring me in with him.  I'd handle that while he set the magazine to blow on our way out. Local LE would pick up the ringleaders.  We'd set up with them for that--we were just waiting for arrival on site to iron out some of the details."

Staring at the blueprint, its lines clear in the shadow cast over them by Durstang, Wufei said sharply, "We're not interchangeable.  I can't get you in like that, and I'm not an explosives expert."

Durstang raised his eyebrows, studying Wufei with a mild look that made him think of Master O.  Then the expression passed, and the other agent just gave him a grin. "Well, there goes my theory that you had overlap in your training."

"Piloting, basic weapons training, some strategy and tactics," Wufei offered grudgingly, feeling like he'd been reproved as Master O had done in the past, chiding by virtue of not responding to an error or rudeness.  He didn't offer more, though; only if he judged it relevant would he share more with Durstang. Otherwise it was no-one's business but their own.

Durstang rested his chin on a hand, cupping that elbow with his other hand as he leaned back in the seat with the wheeze of thickly-padded upholstery, and studied Wufei. "You weren't taught to fight as a group?"

"We never _met _until we came to Earth, and didn't start to work together until later," Wufei said, holding back a scowl as a few other things occurred to him.  They might not have met, but they'd all been trained by scientists who had--and who knew what they had arranged beforehand?  He and the others might as well have been pawns in the hands of chessmasters.  

Durstang gave a bemused, "Huh.  Didn't expect that.  So, since you can't do what we'd planned, do you have any suggestions?  I'd like to salvage the arrangements with local LE if we can," he added, with a sudden chuckle that surprised Wufei.  "No sense in letting them know that the Preventers have a screw-up on their hands."

_Damn you, Maxwell, why did you do this? _Wufei swore silently, spreading the satellite images out between himself and Durstang.   The other man silently handed him some profile sheets: presumably the ringleaders. A pat of his breast pocket, then his pants proved his reading glasses were not present.  _Damn it,_ he swore again.  _Need to get a pair to leave here in the office_.  He bent closer to the documents to study them more intently.  

They tossed ideas back and forth until noon, when Durstang declared a break for lunch.  Wufei declined the man's invitation to accompany him, using the profiles as the excuse--he could use the break to catch up on some of the reading.  

But after allowing five minutes to pass, he stepped out and ducked into the adjacent communications room, where a bank of screens showing newscasts from around the Sphere took up an entire wall, where there were vid units and privacy.

He took a seat in front of one of those, setting his irritation aside and mentally composing a brief message to send to Maxwell's number.  His good intentions lasted until, to his surprise, Maxwell actually answered the call in person.  "What the hell," Wufei blurted, taking in the background past Maxwell's shoulders, "are you doing in the _spaceport_?"

Maxwell paused, eyebrows raising.  He was wearing sunglasses again--a rather underhanded trick to use when talking to another, in Wufei's opinion.  "Thought it was Sally, maybe, or--it's Wufei," he said, looking up past the hand-held to speak to someone nearby.  He lowered his gaze to the screen once more.  "Hi, Wufei."

Heat spiked through Wufei in the face of the other's nonchalance as he made the obvious connection between Maxwell's addressee and the absent Yuy.  "You're leaving Earth.  _Why are you leaving Earth, Maxwell_?"  

Wufei watched as Maxwell tried to muster a grin. "You feeling okay, buddy? No need to get in such a twist. We'll just be gone a couple days."

"I'm not the one getting people called off downtime to cover their place on assignments," Wufei snapped, and had the satisfaction of seeing Maxwell flinch.  "What are you doing? Why couldn't it wait until you returned with Durstang? What is going on?"

The only foreigners whose expressions Wufei could read with any reliability were the other pilots; several shared hours in prison had made Maxwell the easiest of them all.  But the damn glasses made that impossible.  Maxwell said shortly, the typical breeziness gone from his tone, "It's complicated. We're not sure yet.  Wufei, could I--could you let it rest until we're back? I'll explain then. Promise."

Wufei said nothing as he continued to look at Maxwell, whose mouth thinned unhappily as the silence stretched between them.  It was serious, whatever was sending them off-planet, Wufei acknowledged.  It wasn't something as clear-cut as an assignment, or a battle; even those you could go into in poor shape and the adrenaline would take your concerns and fears and angers and turn them into excitement, however tense.  There wasn't a shred of such on Maxwell's face as he waited patiently for Wufei's response.  "Fine," he said shortly.

Maxwell didn't even smile his relief.  "Thanks, man. Owe you one.  Things okay between you and Durstang?"

"We're getting there," Wufei said, wanting to close his eyes in exasperation when he saw the ghosting of a familiar pressure against the other pilot's black jacket when the other shifted, and grinned in a way obviously meant to irritate.  He wasn't wearing the Preventers jacket, so he couldn't even be said to be in uniform.  "Maxwell, please tell me you have your concealed carry permits on you."

"Not _on_ me," Maxwell said, leaving Wufei biting his tongue to keep from rising to the bait.  "Oops, look at the time, Wufei, so sorry, got to go."  He didn't even bother to glance away from the screen to check an imaginary clock.  "Be well," he finished, the brief flash of humor fading even as he disconnected the call.

Wufei stared at the blank screen, mulling the call over and trying not to feel more irate than he had going into it.  Something was not only going on; something was _wrong_.  He played back his memory of the call, and--Sally.  Maxwell had thought Sally might be calling; Sally had been with the Director before Durstang, too.

Calmly, he punched a shortcut code into the vid unit.  

The main hall guard's face blinked onto the screen after a moment.  Their identification cards were electronically chipped, traceable; the guard covered that as part of his security detail.  "Has Agent Po left yet?" Wufei asked.  Getting the guard's negation after he checked his computer records, Wufei thanked him and sat back for a few minutes, then stood, checking the time on his watch.  He still had half an hour before Durstang was due back: time and plenty to see about finding Sally, ask her a few questions, and read a couple of the profiles.

With it opposite the conference room, he saw at once that her desk was empty.  Next door to him, the Director's office stood, door closed and the glass panels to either side dark.  So Sally wasn't there, either, and the Director had gone to wherever her home was.  He'd heard she had Mariemaia living with her now.  The copy room--he ducked around a row of empty cubicles, giving it an eye as he pretended a need to visit his desk.  Noin was gone from hers, too.  That added another possibility: both women might be at lunch on the twelfth floor, which served as a cafeteria.  Or the bathroom, for that matter.  But he'd check the infirmary, first.

He found her there at the desk, quiet in a thin white coat as she stared at something on the screen she faced. When he knocked on the open door, he saw the flicker from the screen shift across her eyes as her glance jumped up to him. "Wufei," she said after a moment's hesitation.  A smile of greeting followed before she leaned back and gave him a quick head-to-toe glance.  "Not feeling sick, are you?"

He snorted at the ridiculousness of the thought, and took a few steps into the room towards her desk.  Casually, in the gesture of a rote attempt to tidy things, she picked up the open folder in front of her and closed it, then tapped it and the folders and papers stacked beneath it into a neat pile.  But the move had also obscured from his sight the name written on the folders, or on any of the other documents at which she'd been looking.  She caught him watching her, and knew that she knew he had figured out what she was doing; but she said nothing.  She was going to make him ask, he thought crossly, but asked regardless.  "What's going on with Yuy and Maxwell?"

Sally didn't bother to deny the inquiry; it was one of the things he liked about her, when he had to consider that.  He appreciated her directness.  "I can't tell you."

"Can't, or won't?"

"It's confidential," she said, blue eyes resting evenly on his face as she looked up at him.  

He caught the implications as she had meant him to, and stood there for a minute, considering his options.  She wouldn't tell him more, but whatever was going on was medically related.  Confidentiality wouldn't be an issue otherwise: instead, she would have refused to disclose details on the grounds of their being classified.  "Ah," he remarked noncommittally, then added, "Thank you," before returning to the elevator, the Preventers' floor, and the conference room.  He needed to consider this some more; he still didn't have an answer he liked.  Going off-planet for health reasons?  The only medical treatment the colonies excelled in was limb replacement, and neither Maxwell nor Yuy were in need of that.

He needed to let the information settle for a while before he could come up with a decision about what to do next.  There were still had a good twenty minutes before Durstang was due back, so he set those thoughts aside and sat down and pilfered a fruit bar from the break room to eat while he did some of the reading that he'd suggested was his purpose in declining to eat with the other Preventer.  

These Lord's Resistance people were not going to climb high on his list of respected opponents.  Hoping to evade retribution by basing oneself across international borders in a world still jumpy and nervous about war seemed more likely to draw attention rather than defuse it, to Wufei's mind.  But, he conceded reluctantly, if your goals were strong enough, sometimes risks could seem minimal in exchange for achieving them.  He was more than familiar with that mindset, even if religion seemed an odd choice for bloodshed. That thought immediately called to mind three instances of China exiling clans and one entire city to L5 colonies for their religious persuasions or stances on the country's treatment of religious freedom--including that truly odd incident in AC 53--so it was certainly not without precedent.

He heard Noin return first, exchanging greetings with Martje after she stepped out of the elevator.  Then Sally came, but only stopped by her desk briefly before leaving again; he imagined that she went home this time.   A few analysts passed in and out, mostly in groups.  Last was Durstang.

They wrangled over possible plans for another four hours before calling it off for the evening, and it took another agonizingly slow half-hour before Durstang left.  Then there was only Wufei and Nicolov, who had arrived for an evening shift, left.  After a winking grin and some brief chat, which practice with Maxwell made it easy to ignore, Nicolov moved to his own desk and his own business, leaving Wufei free to pursue his own.

Wufei'd had an idea, in between the debate over how to approach the Lord's Resistance situation and not make it obvious that the Preventers had experienced a sudden and unexpected change of plans.  Lacking knowledge was the worst position a person could ever be in; without knowledge, you were powerless even to assess your situation fully and rationally.  He didn't have the knowledge necessary to judge his current situation.  Waiting until Maxwell returned to redeem his promise was a possibility, but it was _now_ that Wufei had been called upon to substitute for him.  Wufei had a right to know how long these circumstances might persist.  

He was light-years from being the hacker Yuy was, nor was he close to Barton's or Maxwell's levels, but when he was already connected to the network, his little experience wasn't so great a hindrance.  It was one of the other aspects of their training which he suspected they all shared, though he had never heard Winner speak of a hacking job.  But Winner rarely discussed the details of his business if he could avoid it without giving offense, so that was not surprising.  

A check showed that no logging software targeted the networked machines; there was such a security program running, but it recorded only the actions taken through remote connections.  It took fewer than a half-dozen minutes to locate the ops password file. 

He only needed two more before he found Sally's folder system for medical documents. 

Sally's password opened them; he started scanning Yuy's first.  A lot of the data he could skip, as it referenced nothing but the typical details of physical status.  His reading slowed as he came to an extensive paragraph detailing results from some soft-tissue scans, and resulting commentary.  _Psychotropic dependence.  Neuroadaptation.  _The words stood out, clearings in the thicket of abbreviations and jargon.  

Wufei let his breath out in a slow hiss, and checked Mawell's records.  It was the same.  An addendum had been added under today's date on Maxwell's record alone: a notation of symptoms, a reference to G.

No wonder Maxwell had looked so subdued--and under that, ill at ease.  How could he not, with his body betraying him?

No wonder they were leaving the planet.  They had to be going to the source.  Sources.

Perhaps Wufei's ancestors looked upon him more kindly than he had believed.  Soberly, he closed the files and spent the necessary time to ensure that there he had left no traces on his computer or the others to indicate that the files had been accessed.

He was going to have to think about this.

* ~ * ~ *

Heero sat down in a hard plastic spaceport chair, one chair removed from where Duo was baiting Wufei.  His partner shot a grin at the miniature vidscreen of his portable--not a happy expression, but a cynical, semi-automatic smile--before firmly thumbing the end button.  "We're gonna owe him a hell of an explanation when we get back," he said as he put the portable away, then added wryly  "You'd think he didn't like good ol' Chas or something."

Heero made a noise to show he'd heard.  "Sally implied that Wufei wasn't exhibiting our symptoms."

"Y'know, Heero," Duo said with a sideways look, "if you're suggestin' we don't tell Wufei about this, then I'm willin' to listen to what you have planned, but I don't think he's likely to let this go."

"No," the Wing pilot returned, blinking.  He studied Duo's profile, and finding that blank behind the dark aviator sunglasses he wore, his body language.  Bony shoulders rolled forward, arms crossed over his chest, chin down and thin, flexible mouth twitching up at the corners.  It was a familiar posture, and one which normally meant Duo was waiting for something.  "I was only observing that it's quite possible that whatever is wrong with us, Wufei is not sharing our affliction."

"Aha."  It was a bare acknowledgement, then the sidestep.  "So what's the word on the shuttle?"

Heero didn't miss the quick change of subject, but he decided he could ignore it for the moment.  "Twenty minute wait--they're still fueling."

"Christ!"

"It would have been longer if we'd taken the commercial flight," the Wing pilot pointed out, eyeing his companion.  If he hadn't seen Duo perform under more pressure than this, he might have suspected the other was in danger of behaving irrationally during the course of their mission.

"Yeah, but that was within budget."  He fired off another smile, this time Heero's direction.  "But no worries on that, I suppose, since the bastard is footing the bill."

Weighing his options carefully, Heero said, "My question?"

Duo turned toward him, his eyes barely visible behind the unyielding dark lenses of his sunglasses; his brows drew down in a crooked frown.  "What the fuck are you talking about?"

"Our contract," Heero explained.  "It's my turn to ask a question."

Duo reached up and slid the glasses down his nose with his middle finger, blue eyes fixing Heero above the frames.  "Our contract?  You mean that question for a question deal?"

"Yes," he agreed, matching Duo's look.  "I wanted to know--"

"It's not a fucking contract, _Yuy_," the long-haired pilot interrupted, stressing Heero's last name until it sounded like an epithet.  "It was a stupid bargain that we made over breakfast.  It's not--it's. . . ."  He trailed off, clenching his teeth so hard a muscle in his cheek jumped with the effort.  "Listen Heero, I am trying _real_ hard to deal with your bullshit right now.  If you'd try to act human for the half a goddamn hour or so, it would really help."

Heero's throat went dry.  "Behave like a human?  You mean fly off the handle and snap every five second?"

"You're in no position to bitch about me being a little fucking edgy," Duo shot back, his chin dropping dangerously.  "You're the one who freaked about me taking my own time at the fucking video store.  At least I have a good reason to be upset."

"A good reason?"  Heero's eyebrows arched, and he actually chuckled at that.  "You're upset that Professor G altered you somehow.  Frankly, I'm amazed you didn't assume as much already."

"And you're _not_ upset?"

"I didn't say that; what I am not is surprised."  Heero shut his teeth on what he was about to say.  Duo seemed to be operating under the mistaken impression that he was guaranteed some level of somatic integrity.  That had not been in his agreement with J.  A low, angry burn warmed Heero's system, and his hands twitched.  The familiar pressure of a gun against the small of his back was strangely comforting.

"Fuck off," Duo snapped, turning away.  "I don't want to have this fucking fight right now."

"You've wanted this 'fucking' fight since you found out," Heero observed stonily.  "Don't take it out on me because Sally ruined your fantasy about the nice man who gave you a weapon of mass destruction."

"What part of 'fuck off' didn't you get?" There was a familiar growl in the other's voice.  Normally that tone had been reserved for the Alliance or OZ; apparently, failing a mortal enemy, Heero would do.  "Are you just trying to--"

Duo broke off, turning toward the main corridor.  Heero followed his gaze and felt his face heat as he realized that they had an audience.  Swallowing hard, the Deathscythe pilot suggested, "Think maybe we could move this somewhere a tad less public?"

Standing up stiffly, Heero grabbed his bag and stalked away.  He heard the shuffle of fabric behind him as Duo followed after.  Not sure where to go, Heero walked in the direction of the charter launch towers, away from the busier commercial gates.  The banked anger continued to spark, looking for something to catch.  His mind went back over their brief altercation, realizing belatedly that he'd let himself be distracted.

He had a question, and they had a contract.  Only, Duo didn't see it that way.

Satisfied that they were well enough removed from the normal flows of traffic, Heero stopped, dropped his luggage, and faced his partner.  Duo pulled up short, surprised, then scowled.  Milky light flooded the hall they were in through a bank of floor to ceiling windows, and nearly half of Duo's face indecipherable behind the shield of his glasses.

"So we don't have a contract.  What do we have then?" Heero demanded without preamble.

"What we had, emphasis on _had_, was a stupid fucking deal to get you to talk."  Duo's mouth made a hard line.  No more comedy mask.  "I didn't know you'd take it to heart."

"We had a deal--"

"Sweet fucking Jesus wept, yeah!" Duo hissed, hands fisting at his sides. "A deal that bit me on the ass more once.  Drop it.  From now on, I'll answer your fucking questions as I damn well please.  Because I want to, not because I'm obligated."

Heero caught himself recoiling, tamping down the urge to pull away while his brain worked rapidly trying to assimilate the shift.  Could Duo do that?  There was no penalty in their agreement.  But could he step out of a contract like that?  If he could just change his mind at any time, what was to stop him from doing so?

The anger went out, leaving a curious numbness behind.  There had been no clause in their contract keeping Duo from abandoning it at any time--and when he felt that it no longer suited him, he did just that.

"What?"  Duo taunted.  "Nothin' to say to that?"

What could he say to that?

"Didn't fucking think so."  He looked out the windows; the light reflected off his glasses, white on black.

"We still have a mission," Heero said evenly, not sure if it was to himself or Duo.

"Yeah," the other replied, barking a quick round of laughter as his grin found its place again.  "We do have that.  Shall we see what's taking our ride so long?"

Nodding, Heero retrieved his bag from the floor and ran over the plan in his head.  First they would locate G, then run reconnaissance before meeting with the Professor.  Once they met him, they would proceed to interrogate with whatever means deemed necessary to discover the nature of their condition and whether or not the effects were reversible.  "Do you have a plan in mind?"

"Sure," Duo told him.  "Just let me do the talking once we hit the L2 customs agents."

"We have Preventers' clearance," Heero pointed out.

"Yeah," Duo agreed blandly.  "It'll take forever to get through with that shit."  This time Duo took the lead as they navigated to the rental hanger, his boots scuffing out an even rhythm on the linoleum tiles.  "We'll use the Sweeper's dock.  I'll have us through two hours quicker that way.  The sooner we're in, the sooner I can get my hands on that rat-faced little fuck."


End file.
